Knole Sevenoaks 28/09/14

Sevenoaks is an easy trip from SE London, all you need is a car or motorcycle, or by bicycle it is well within the range of today's fitness fanatics with the light, silent machines, and enough money to get you in.
For us four wheel folk, that will set you back a mere £4 to park in the grounds. Some people were walking from the town, but you need at least 30 mins extra and power in the legs to spare.
Knole means a spot on the top of a hill, so hills there are plenty to climb. But you do get to dwell on "The Gallops", so named as it was where the landowners of past generations chased the deer along a glorious grassy meadow, overlooked by wooded hills on each side.
The deer are still here, although no rutting was seen by your correspondent and his party. Just some dappled fawns and mothers, and the odd adolescent male with antlers just poking skyward by a foot above the eyes and ears.The map of where the deer had been spotted that day showed they were at the far boundaries, well beyond our capabilities.

Going round the 12 or so rooms open to the public only set us back £10.50 each. There are 365 rooms to roam, but only 12 accessible to us plebs. The ubiquitous wood panelling was wondrous, with secret door panels visible behind the omnipresent ropes.

Actually, Knole is almost apologetic about its roping; you are invited to walk on the rugs and touch certain off cuts of tapestry and textiles, just to show you how badly these materials wear. The main long gallery filled with portraits of noblemen, wives, cardinals and dignitaries is one of several at Knole - designed to provide Elizabethans with a place to exercise in bad weather while parading before the gaze of their illustrious relatives - leads you to three huge vases and then into the Billiards Room. Two "After Titians" look over the ancient billiard table, with a collection of cues which are bent at the end. Are they rests? The notably personable and friendly staff soon answered my question.

"Did you know Billiards began as an outdoor game , played on grass, with mallets and hoops?"
"Well no"...
"Hence the green baize and bent, mallet like cues...Why are they called cues? "
"Well, I dont know"...
""Because they turned the mallets around when the game came indoors, to use the small end of the stick to pot the balls. And the French for back-side or rear-end is cul..."
"Like your bum" I so eloquently clarified.
"Exactly. Do you see this rope here," the man added, pointing up at the ceiling at what looked like a bell pull. "This is where the term dumb-bell comes from, as it was weighted so gentlemen, ( aka knights ) could strengthen their sword arm by pulling on it repeatedly but it was silent of course".

The next rooms featured four-poster beds, ornate silver guilded mirrors and other ancient silver wear and furniture.
Knole really does ooze old-world atmosphere, that makes it easy to understand how the writing of Orlando by Virginia Woolf came about. The presence of so many ghosts is so far from oppressive. The house is presented as a celebration of past lives having enjoyed this wonderful house, set in 1000 acres of medieval deer park.
Vita Sackville West lived here and breathed life into the place, but because she was a girl, could not inherit. So off she went to Sissinghurst to have more gay affairs, possibly with Woolf,  no doubt slightly displeased with that particular [salic] law.

Map to the Stars / Gods Pocket

Dont believe any negative reviews of these super movies, they are both not to be missed. The hellish Hollywood of 'Maps' is brilliantly dark, cynical and sick. The spoilt teenagers are endlessly amoral and horrid about any peers and elders who cross their paths. The older generations, personified in particular by Julianne Moore as a star facing middle age and desperate to win a part, are no better and are transparently, equally amoral.
The story touches on incest heavily, ghosts haunt the protagonists in a chilling way, and family members who have a wicked side re-emerge to further corrupt the druggy, pestilient existence of the
monstrous members of the main family. The 13 year old boy and main wage earner of the family is quite something; nasty as any Mexican cartel member in the head. When he starts playing around with a loaded gun, you truly fear for everything in that room.

Gods Pocket - another winning performance by much missed Philip Seymour Hoffman as a loser trying to keep his head above water in a world where everyone is about to drown (their sorrows)...most have already done so and long given up. Mad Men star Christina Hendrix plays a down trodden (isnt everyone ) MILF who is easliy seduced by the sorry (isnt everyone) local star reporter, bald, wrinkled, sozzled (isnt everyone - ie henceforth) who writes a storey about the death of Hendrix horrible (ie !) son.He thinks he is doing the neighbourhood a favour, but the locals who inhabit the local bar (e) dont see it that way.

Matisse The Cut-Outs - Tate Modern Sept 2014

Art - No doubt the Matisse exhibition at the Tate was the highlight of this art summer. Of any summer. The first large room was my favourite - to see the entirity of the Jazz book he knocked up in the 40s was a delight.It was published in 1947 by his Greek friend Teriade, with whom he had collaborated with the Verve magazine.Only 100 original books were released, composed of 20 colour prints and accompanying text. The finished article was exhibited together with the original "Maquettes". Pins were still in situ, slightly rusty and bent, but still doing the job. Each page featured a picture and was mirrored with text opposite. Sometimes the subject was obvious, but a fun challenge came from those with a weird French title which gave us Anglais no clues. So you had to work to find out what you were looking at. The circus themes were joyous fun, sublime collages and brush work with bold colours adding to a lucious extravaganza of pleasure for the eyes and brain. The Trapeze was super, as is The Fall of Icarus. Despite the subject matter of the latter, the sheer positivity is all encompassing and winning.

This is one of the great works of the 20th century; bold, unapologetic, a melange of material & colour and a happy mess of glue and rough edges. To see the original work added to the experience twofold. I must have spent an hour among the crowd, lapping it up. There's no anguish here, unless the scrawl of words that accompany the pictures express another story. I gave up trying to make it out, the words are written with a brush and the joined up writing is in keeping with what appears to be a stream of consciousness type commentary on art. Worry not, the pictures express a childs eye joy of which this old man, stuck in his wheelchair, determined to wring every scrap of genius out of his broken body, was a magnificent standard bearer.

The confident large compositons such as The Snail followed, as did the Blue Nudes - perhaps his most famous image? Then designs for the Chapel in Vence,including the vestments and stained glass windows, to which he devoted huge amounts of energy and time, as it was fatefully running out on him. Another awesome treat; first you see the rough cut design by Matisse, then the finished window, a lovely melange of blues, green, white and yellow, backlit to maximum effect.
What a fantastic show !
P Budgie 25-09-14