Wednesday 1 July

11th week! 11 days to go. Hot - not as hot as yesterday but hot.

Walk to Pimlico tube (underground) and lovely man helps us. We buy an Oyster Card which is the cheapest option. We quickly (after one change at Oxford Circus) arrive at St Pauls. We get on the third train from Oxford Circus - the first two are crushingly full. The good news is that a new train came along within a minute of the previous one leaving.

When we surface at St Pauls we can't see the cathedral so ask locals, The first two have no idea and are embarrassed! The third one gets us to walk 15 paces and there it is! An ugly building was in the way.

Tina goes in and sees graves of Nelson, Wellington, Grey, Wren. She loves it. I sat on he steps and got some great photos as the choir boys trooped out for a formal photo on the steps. I stood by the photographer.

We go across to Starbucks. There is a sign "Geography is a flavour".

We cross the Millennium Bridge and Tina goes on her Globe tour. She got to take photos inside before the performance and the exhibition was very good.

I went to Tate Modern. First thing I saw - imagine a white room and all that is in it is a HUGE table and 4 chairs. The chairs were roughly twice my size. The notes said the work was 2 and a 1/2 times normal size. It was by Robert Theirien and is titled "No Title (Table and Four Chairs)". It was done in 2003 and the accompanying notes read "In the presence of the giant objects the viewer feels physically diminished. Towering over us they return us to the experiences of childhood adventure below the adult word".

Next to catch the eye were some Picassos. "Nude Woman With Necklace" (1968) is described as "revised the traditional ideal of beauty with particular violence, subjecting the body to a repeated assault in paint ... a reclining female figure is presented as a raw, sexualised arrangement of orifices, breasts and cumbersome limbs."

There was also "Reclining Nude" done in 1971 just weeks before his 90th birthday.

Then there was "The Kiss" (1967), "emphasises the sexuality of The Kiss by presenting it as a voracious struggle between the compulsive man and the ecstatic woman. The patterned interlocking of lips, teeth and tongues suggests their urgent sexual appetite."

Wander through to a room with a full size old VW van (bus) - poor paintwork and rust - with 24 brown sleds behind it. Each sled has a roll of felt on it, a flashlight and a round piece of fat. This 1969 "work of art" is by Joseph Beuys and is titled "the pack". Very odd. Equally strange was Miroslaw Balta's "480x10x10" from 2002 which is, presumably, (I didn't count them) 480 bars/pieces of used soap hanging from the ceiling on a wire rope.

More to my taste are the realist works "Portrait of a Young Woman" by Meredith Frampton (1935) and "Morning" by Dod Proctor (1926). This latter painting was enormously popular. It is a young woman, still mostly asleep but just starting to stir. "as an image of awakening it carried allusions to regeneration and stability after the war." So good. To me it just looked like a girl sleeping on a bed.

Last work to catch the eye before meeting up with Tina was Cornelia Parker's 1988 "Thirty Pieces of Silver". This artist is "known for works in which she takes objects and subjects them to violence". This work will require you to imagine:
1. more than a thousand pieces of silver have been scoured from junk shops - objects no longer wanted by their owners
2. these objects were then flattened by a steamroller. Among the objects were forks, spoons, trophies, candlesticks, trombones, teapots.
3. the flattened objects are grouped into 30 groups.
4. these objects in their 30 groups are hung from the high ceiling by thousands of wires and all end up a hand's span off the ground.
The big idea is just as people discarded these items so Judas discarded Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.

And then it's off to the Globe to meet up with Tina. We go into the Globe shop and Tina buys a t-shirt with the message "Something wicked this way comes" - how appropriate!!! We hire a cushion as the seats are old hard planks.We are in the upper gallery (top gallery); Tina in section L, me M. You have VERY little space. We have have shade compared to those in the Pit.

The performance of As You Like It was stunning. Powerful acting with lots of humour. The actors had to maintain focus with jets and helicopters flying overhead eg just as one of them starts The Seven Ages Of Man.

Tina is positively glowing. She is so happy.

Outside The Globe are paving stones with names on them - people who contributed to the building of The Globe. John Cleese took great delight in getting Michael Palin's name spelt wrong - Pallin.

I took Tina to the Tate Modern for a quick tour of the thinks I described above.

Lovely dinner at Cafe Rouge besides St Pauls. Two salads and an antipasto platter. Perfect for a hot day.

Underground back to Victoria Station and taxi to hotel.