Work in progress? Er...

A bit of history just so I could use this photo: On Tuesday I took myself off to Buckingham Palace to meet mum and dad (who live there) and see the Queen's collection of Italian Art, currently on display in the Queen's Gallery. A splendid show, but how come Liz has got all this amazing stuff hidden away when it's meant to belong to the nation...and when it is brought out we have to queue up and pay for the privilege of looking at it. It makes me come over all anti-establishment. Well I never. For all that (and the ghastly staff who appear to have been recruited from a particularly stuffy branch of the WI and treat you which such haughty condescension...) it's well worth seeing, even if just for the Caravaggio's - or indeed the Michelangelo drawings. Afterwards, we flopped on the grass in St James' Park and had a bit of a picnic. It was very un-anti-establishment. Mmm - rum and raisin ice-cream.

I took my leave and headed off to the National Portrait Gallery to seek inspiration amongst the members of the Kit-cat Club. It's all so eighteenth century. As is my dissertation, which brings me seamlessly to today. I spent all morning busily downloading and scanning images for my presentation, or 'Work In Progress' seminar. I then dashed off to Birkbeck to put together a Powerpoint presentation. It was all a bit strange. I had to tell people what I had been doing, and what I intended to do for my dissertation, the title of which (Interpretations of Modern Urban Life in and around Covent Garden during the Early Georgian Period) is already giving me the heebee-jeebees. If anybody happens to have an images of Covent Garden and its inhabitants from circa 1700-1750, then be a love and share! Well, my presentation was met with a stunned silence. They were either impressed or bored shitless. You decide! I went to the student union bar and drank very cheap Kronenberg to make the memory go away. Unbelievably it worked.