This was a day – a little while ago now – that some photos I was looking through reminded me of; so I dug the notepad out of its box (I try and store them in a nice organised way) – and had a read through…

When we got off the train in London, it was extremely gloomy outside and I thought I felt a few spots of rain, and we were underground on a District Line tube train 5 minutes later, got off, made it to Earls Court, and got on another slightly more crowded tube train (with what seemed to be school kids on their way home on it); at South Kensington, a girl wearing a top that had a human rib cage marked out on it got on; things got a bit more squished up at Knightsbridge, we got off at Piccadilly Circus – and there, there were lots of posters for ‘The New Musical Comedy’, ‘The Young Frankenstein’, Arcteryx was something I forgot, and the Minamoto Kitchohan was something I also forgot – because we got to The Royal Academy of Arts.

We were apparently required to have our bags searched upon entrance, but the woman doing it seemed to just peer in and then say ‘ok’; and once in, we had a quick bit of tea and looked through the information leaflet, which was giving analysis on the thought behind the artwork (which – personally – I think is a bit pointless when the artists are dead and can’t tell you what they thought).

When we came out of that little cafe bit of the museum, I noticed that all the (framed) posters – covering the whole of the small corridor we were in – were identical, except that each 1 was the opposite way up to the 1 next to it; and this corridor also contained what looked like a urinal, and what looked like a telephone with a dead orange fish on top of it.

We went into the exhibition hall just before 5pm and agreed that I would stroll around and take notes while she studied things in a bit more detail, so I began, and read a short paragraph on the wall titled ‘Identities’. That said the artists Salvador Dalí (he was Spanish – 1904->1989) and Marcel Duchamp (he was French – 1887 -> 1968) ‘followed similar trajectories – experimenting with different styles including Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism and Futurism’, ‘the egotist Dali deliberately courted publicity with ever more extreme antics, beginning as a dandy, and as his moustache grew, progressing to an outrageous provocateur. Duchamp – making works in secret – convinced the world that he had given up art entirely in favour of playing chess professionally’.

Paintings included 1 (‘Portrait Of My Father’ – Dali – 1925) of a large, mostly bald and rather grumpy looking man with a pipe (for smoking) sat in a chair (and appeared to be covered in a blanket), and a huge (5ft x 5ft ish) and mostly blank canvas apart from a few random thick white and black squiggly bits around the edges (labeled as ‘Untitled – Dali’); a note (on paper and framed) written – in French – by Duchamp had a translation underneath it about name changes; the picture next to it was a photo of him dressed as his female alter ego; and another paragraph on the wall said Duchamp experimented with other disguises in his artwork, such as soaping his hair, and shaving his head like a monk.

By this point, there was a man standing in front of a wall while chewing 1 of the strings coming out of the hood of his jumper (the 1’s that go around the neck of the hood of a hoodie so you can tighten it); and in the next room, 1 piece of artwork – ‘ Anthropomorphic Beach – 1928 – Dali’ (painted cork, sponge, and wood were the materials used) had what seemed to be a human finger (presumably wooden) pointing upwards out of it in a slightly curved way.

The famous urinal (by Duchamp) was – according to an information card – titled ‘Fountain’; there was the old fashioned telephone I’d spotted earlier – with what I then learnt from the label was a lobster (not a fish) on it (1938 – Dali – Lobster telephone – made from a telephone, steel, plaster, rubber, resin, and paper), ‘Hat Rack’ was another celebrated work, as was ‘Why Not Sneeze’ by Rose Selavy (made from 152 marble ‘sugar cubes’, a thermometer, and cuttlefish bone, in a painted metal bird cage fitted with 4 wooden bars).

In the next room was a massive Dali painting called ‘Madonna’ – that when viewed from further away, appears to be the Virgin and Child enclosed within a giant human ear; a Duchamp 1 called ‘3 standard stop pages’ was some bits of wood on canvas – described by Duchamp as an experiment to ‘imprison and preserve forms obtained through change’. Apparently a mutual fascination of the 2 artists was the game of chess; outside the door was ‘a reconstruction of twelve hundred coal sacks suspended from the ceiling over a stove (1938)’ by Duchamp (they were lots and lots of sandbag sort of things with black dust also over them and tied up at the top); and back in the shop there were ‘Dada Egg cups’ shaped like small urinals, colouring books, a ‘jumping frog’ wooden toddler toy, t shirts saying ‘Out of Order’ on them, milk chocolate lobsters, and hog hair paint brushes.

K.Minamoto was a Japanese confectionery shop (opposite an MG car showroom) several doors along when we came out just before 6pm, I grabbed a free London Evening Standard, and some rush hour travel was clearly going on when we got back on the Bakerloo line. This train had a small advert (on the bar of adverts just below the ceiling of the train) that said ‘Scratch ‘n’ Sniff – No 63 – Tube Smell’ on it; Baker Street was where things began becoming like a baked bean can (incredibly busy and stuffed with people), but Marylebone was next, Great Western Railway adverts saying ‘What took you so long?’ lined the walls of the escalators/staircases up to the main station, and there, we got a Cornish Pasty from a West Cornish Pasty stall (1 of the types of pasty on sale was labelled as ‘The Beast’); I noticed some Halloween themed boxes of chocolates/chocolate things at the tiny Hotel Chocolat shop – ‘Cryptopher The Vampire’ (caramel chocolate), ‘Witchney The Witch’ (milk chocolate), Wingston The Bat (dark chocolate), Yumpkins, Oozy Eyes, Halloween Tiddly Pots, and a ‘Skull Lick’ (which was chocolate on a stick). 1 of the staff there (female – late 20’s) offered me a chocolate – which was shaped like a bat, and told me these chocolates were slightly pale because they have caramel in – and I complimented the imaginative names, accepted this chocolate, and thanked her very much.

I forgot when we boarded the train home – and while on it, I saw a woman watching the TV program Dragons Den on her phone, and peered at a cardboard tube of smarties that she’d got out of her bag for 30 seconds; I itched my stomach and found a small piece of pastry that had dropped off my Cornish pasty in my stomach button, Mum and I repeatedly elbowed each other, got off at 8.35pm, and back at home, the pet sitter had left a lovely note on the kitchen table, Soot the cat got up and strolled around, and I went to bed very soon afterwards.