Wilf: Let ladies lead on London trip

Oct 31 2009 by Wilf Lunn

It took Moses 40 years to find the promised land and then he died before setting foot on it.

It’s often said that if a woman had been leading they would have got there a lot quicker. With this thought in mind I always let Liz do all the path-finding when we’re in London.

Apart from insisting Canada House was the National Portrait Gallery and a slight contretemps about crossing Russell Square, she’s pretty good.

We were off to see the Wallace collection where I understand Vivienne Westwood goes for inspiration and Damien Hirst was exhibiting. On the way we passed the Economic Science building where I envisioned folk inside mumbling: “Do be careful with the sodium chloride, less acetic acid and turn that Bunsen burner, down you’re using too much gas.”

Outside the Wallace Gallery there is a life-sized flayed man. Not flayed in the sense we used as kids meaning scared: “I’m not flayed a you.”

This was a peeled person, skinless with his skin hanging over his arm. He represented Saint Bartholomew who was skinned for his beliefs. He’s the patron Saint of leather tanners. We had a plaster version at the tech so we could study muscles. I later realised this was one of Damien Hirst’s pieces. The fact that the figure was holding a pair of scissors had stuck me as odd at the time. It gave the impression he was about to make his skin into little leather knick-knacks.

My favourite bronze in the Wallace Collection is much smaller – it’s a hermaphrodite. It wasn’t on the table where it is normally exhibited. I asked what had happened to it, but no-one seemed to know.

I caused some consternation when I said to one guard I thought I’d seen it on Portobello Market. Nothing from the collection is allowed to leave the building, not even on loan.

Eventually we found it deep in the basement at the far end. It was in a glass case facing the wall. Could it have been the naughty corner?

Back upstairs I was reminded of my daughter, Anna. When she was little she loved museums and I got fed up long before her and couldn’t get her to leave. We were in one of the arms and armour rooms and a young mother was trying to get her little girl to move on. She said: “Oh do come on, there’s lots of bashing and stabbing things in this next room”.