Saturday, June 5

We’ve seen a great deal of the city today. We journeyed south to the Brixton Market to satisfy Megan’s craving for Jamaican jerk chicken. Brixton apparently forms the hub of London’s West Indian population. Although the market isn’t that large it is rather confusingly laid out, so it took us some time before we could hunt down the elusive chicken. The densely packed stalls, grimy streets and thick Caribbean accents all around brought me right back to the Bahamas. I didn’t even have to close my eyes to imagine I was in Nassau. At last we found some food stalls and I ended up buying my chicken from a teeny shop underneath a staircase. I found the chicken quite tasty but really enjoyed the beans & rice drizzled with curry sauce that went with it.

From grubby Brixton we headed to posh Pimlico and the Tate Britain museum to view Martin Creed’s Work #850. Which was . . . running. Literally, a young sprinter pelting through part of the gallery every 30 seconds. When Megan first described this art installation to me I thought it ridiculous and wondered again how some people got paid huge sums for bizarrely simple works of “art.” The actual thing, though, was surprisingly captivating. Megan and I stayed in this gallery watching people run by for over an hour. An hour. We would have stayed even longer but the runners finally stopped their circuit about 6 p.m. There’s something mesmerizing about standing in a long, echoing gallery and every 30 seconds, almost to the second (we timed it) someone blowing by at top speed, huffing and puffing all the while. It’s like a slow-motion tennis match, watching the runners traverse one end of the gallery to the other every half a minute—you can’t take your eyes off them. I still find the concept a little strange (and envy an artist who gets paid for having other people run for him), but in person the installation is well worth seeing. Especially since it's free!