Five Servings Per Day

Bob and I met at Pimlico station and walked over to Tate Britain together to check out the new exhibitions that opened since we were there last. The exit from Pimlico station has a ramp and a staircase, and I didn't realise until today that I have always used the ramp to enter and exit the station in the past. The ramp emerges onto the street a bit further away from the station than the stairs, so I was surprised when we walked up the stairs today and saw this giant structure that I couldn't recall noticing before:

The intricate cast iron reliefs by Eduardo Paolozzi have been here since 1982, which just goes to show how altering your daily route (even by something as small as changing which station exit you take) can change your perception of this vast city. Paolozzi's panels are not just here for art's sake; they adorn a tube ventilation shaft, bringing beauty to the industrial!

The Turner Prize retrospective exhibition at Tate Britain was a bit hit-and-miss (mostly "miss") and annoyingly organised in terms of being able to follow the exhibits in chronological order and getting a good sense of each year's shortlist in relation to the eventual winner, but we were left in flat-out awe at their current Millais exhibition. Usually we're quite taken with landscapes over portraits, but Millais's portraits were so vivid, dynamic, other-worldly even, that I found myself staring at some of them for quite a long time, trying to figure out what was so striking about the relationship of the people to the backgrounds. The works seemed to change from every angle and some struck both of us as strangely contemporary. We left the rich colours of the exhibit for the more muted colours of the autumn night

and stopped at our neighbourhood Tesco to pick up a few things for dinner. As I passed through the fruit-and-veggie isle, I noticed this odd "new" addition to the produce shelves:

I suppose that they're technically apples, so if argued in a court of law, there could be some justification for placing chocolate-covered apples in the produce section, but the whole thing still seems terribly wrong!