M. Willis Monroe

My parents arrived last Saturday and stayed till Tuesday when they left to see my sister in Thailand. They had a nice time here in London and they’ll be back next in a week as well for a bit. We went to the Tate Modern to see their Duchamp, Manray and Picabia exhibition which was actually very good. I had never seen work by Picabia and I was quite impressed. However I was disappointed by their antagonistic anti-photography policy. I took this one on the sly but my dad got caught and berated by a guard. I understand galleries not wanting people to take photos of the work and then publish them. However to do that you would need to bring a tripod to take quality photos. Your average visitor taking hand-held snaps is not a threat to the gallery or the owner of the works. Some galleries have a no tripod policy which I think is much more sensible. I get quite irate when being told not to photograph art that I paid to see and would like to remember.

I had a Hittite exam last Wednesday. It went pretty well I knew the texts and tried my hardest on the unseen passages. I have an Akkadian exam this Wednesday as well as an Archaeology essay due on Friiday. None of this is helped by the fact that our downstairs neighbors decided to invite ten of the friends over last night to have an argument/fight outside or flat at 4am and leave the dogs barking crazily in their flat under my bed. Chris called the police; I called the councils noise complaint line.

Today was the first proper day of summer; the sun was shinning and it was very warm. I got a flat on the way in and upon taking the tube off couldn’t find the puncture. Sick and tired of getting flate (I’ve had three in the past two weeks) I walked down to the bike shop and bought two new tires and two new tubes. My bike tires were looking pretty horrible with the rubber mostly falling apart. It’s a good investment as they were Armadillo tires, meant to prevent flats. I Finally got to SOAS and did some studying.

I went with Chris and his friend Janice and others to a graffiti show featuring Banksi and other graffiti artists in a disused tunnel near Waterloo. We had to wait an hour an a half to get in but it was well worth it. Every space was covered in some sort of stenciled or graffitied art.

Boris Johnson won the London Mayoral election. It’s hard to believe that the city voted for him. His policies were pipe-dreams and he was just chosen by the conservative party to oust Ken which is a shame because Ken cared about London and worked his way up to the job. Hopefully everyone (Boris included) realizes that he has huge shoes to fill and will take him to task for not filling them.