CardiffBristolLondon

Went to Cardiff to give a talk at the Institute of Theoretical, Applied and Computational Mechanics.

It went pretty well I think - i managed to not waffle on for too long and they asked lots of good questions afterwards. Not keen to face the train-mission back to Cambridge that night, I went to Bristol to stay at Tim's and to catch up with Leah and some of her pals. We had a jolly corking time in a number of salubrious establishments.

Then we went to the Lizard Lounge. No no, no no no no, no no no no, no no there's no limits. No limits to our collective exuberance at the fantastic music, that's for sure.

Bristol's Catholic Cathedral, down the road from Tim's place, is quite a cool modern building, in a similar style to that of Liverpool.

Went to London on the weekend to catch up on exhibitions. Tam and I did no less than 4 in one day: Cezanne in Britain at the National Gallery (very nice selection if not particularly thematic); David Hockney at National Portrait Gallery (fab - plenty of his famous pieces and some great newer works, cool to see this so soon after visiting the 1853 gallery in Saltaire); V&A (just checked out permanent collection, esp. photography and fashion); Fischli & Weiss at Tate Modern (cool variety of clever, thought-provoking works).

Saw the slides at Tate Modern which are the talk of the town at the mo. See here and here and here. They're quite cool (not ridden on them yet however) and extremely popular though the art-i-ness is somewhat ambiguous- very Tate Modern then. (Get yer hand off it, Matt...)