Blue stars

In other words, these:

 

Actually I'll get to those later. Sorry. I'm determined to keep this blog going daily but I'm very tired. I fell asleep in the Tate after work. I queued to see some parrots - in the Tate - (not for long, that's fine, all the fun of the fair, no this isn't Mike Timeout's wry-and-sideways gutless whinge I'm just tired) - and then queued again to get into a "one person at a time" shed among some banana trees. The piece was an example of "Tropicalia", a seventies Brazilian art movement. "It's not all just parrots and banana trees" yelped the signage. There was also some gravel. And once I finally got into the shed (again, didn't have to wait long, all the fun of the fair etc.) and - spoiler warning - turned right four times in the dark and through some beads, I arrived at a badly-tuned telly showing one of the live action Scooby Doo films (I haven't seen either so couldn't say which one... Velma was threatening to quit). I tried to see if you could change the channels. You couldn't.

I didn't stay long, there was a queue. However it struck me that that hadn't stopped others before me. Some of them must have been in there three or four minutes. Watching Scooby Doo. Possibly going Hmmm. And to be fair I was going Hmmm. I was going Hmmm, I wonder what all these people are doing loitering in a shed in the Tate watching Scooby Doo. Maybe that's what everyone was wondering in there. Then again I had just missed the bit where they unmask the ghost, so probably not.

On leaving the shed and seeing the queue I thought "Shall I tell them?"... I didn't of course, all the fun of the fair. But then again it's far less easy to calculate the most public-spirited option when you're dealing with installation art, or indeed any art. (All of which I suppose goes back to a quarrel I had with a friend last week which I have to say she forfeited by branding my wrist with a cheese fork - "Ow! I win!": that old story.)

So anyway, yes, that was Tropicalia - I'd forgotten by the way how terrifying a macaw is once you get beyond the feathers: basically raptor talons jammed into the face of a drowned tiger - and then I fell asleep. And then I went to the Oval House to catch the last night of Steve King's play "Yellow Lines", a play I had sort of helped midwive into being over the course of four years by continually attending readthroughs of drafts in the central role of Colin and then OFFERING! SUGGESTIONS! So it was great to finally see it happen, despite the small, deceived, unhelpful voice that would sound in my head whenever the lead actor was onstage giving his interpetration of an ill-fitted, dyspraxic control freak, "You're playing me. You're playing me. Well, you've got the walk right anyway."

And then, knackered, I got the tube home, demanding an explanation for something.

So here is what I demand an explanation for: Those stars.

Does anyone have any ideas? Please contact me if so. Thank you and good night.