Began the day with brunch at the Courtauld Gallery's cafe, then wandered around the rooms, so peaceful and quiet it feels like a secret gallery. The Degas ballet scenes remind me of a house in Streatham I once knew, where a Degas hung on the wall. Well, not an actual Degas but a print. Actually, not even a print, but a chocolate box lid, and behind it was a safe, built into the wall. I never found out what was in it.

So I was browsing the books at my local charity shop, and I spotted a National Trust book on the history of fashion. I thought to myself that, generally, anyone who has an interest in the history of fashion has more than one book on it, so I carried on browsing and low and behold there were more tucked away amongst the various novels and cook-books. Regrettably I had all of them.

The other day my work companion was having trouble putting on her gloves (admittedly it is August, but they were crocheted summer-weight ones) so I remarked that I once heard that in the 19th century they believed it should take an hour to put on a pair of gloves properly. I suppose ladies didn't have much else to do. Speaking of gloves....I also heard that when Cecil Beaton was photographing Vivien Leigh she complained that the gloves were were too small, to which he replied that actually her hands were too large, a comment that she allegedly never forgot.

I happened to find myself in the new Ceramics Galleries at the V&A, having quite forgotten that 'phase 2' had opened last month. The new section was quite breathtaking, row upon row of objects arranged by factory or country in glass cabinets filling an enfilade of rooms. Apparently a curator can get any object on request. I loved the groups of figures, gathered like a bizarre rococo rave and Catherine the Great's Sevres cameo service (apparently, just to make sure the 800 pieces would be perfect, they made 3000!). The overall effect was quite ravishing. A brief visit to the fashion galleries and the cast courts, followed by a beer in the Pirelli Garden and we were done....with just enough time to buy some Stephen Jones postcards.

The other day I finally visited Dennis Sever's House, on Folgate Street in Spitalfields. I didn't quite manage to become absorbed in the atmosphere, but I did like the lady of the house's bedroom, scattered with ropes of pearls, ribbons, billets-doux, and porcelain tea bowls. The house blends into it's terrace of identical houses, without giving away any of it's secrets until you venture inside. After all that period charm, we needed the glossy modernity of a museum so headed to the new galleries at the Museum of London. I was intrigued by Tom Hunter and James Mackinnon's 'The Ghetto', a two and three-dimensional model of a street in Hackney, but this time the terrace reveals its many secrets, some dark, some wistful and some beautifully ordinary.

Today I've been browsing online for information for my forthcoming trip to Paris. Thankfully Google's translating skills seem to have improved a great deal. I remember, a couple of years ago, reading about the Schiaparelli exhibition at the Musee de la Mode et du Textile, where the translation informed me that: "Schiaparelli ruled Paris fashion, with his great rival Coconut Chanel".

So I went to Tate Britain to check out Fiona Banner's Harrier and Jaguar, two war planes in the Duveen Galleries. They seemed so small! the most striking thing to me about these aircraft was that they usually contain a person, and one who has such horrendous responsibilities. They didn't feel powerful or protective. One of the planes is positioned upside-down and highly polished. It reminded me of the scene in the film 'The Aviator', where Leonardo DiCaprio (as Howard Hughes) runs his hands along a gleaming aircraft in his pursuit of engineering perfection, the scene then cutting to him running his hands along Cate Blanchett's body, clad in bias-cut satin.

Spent a Saturday morning at the new Galleries of Modern London at the Museum of London. I prefer to go on a weekend when the surrounding areas and Postman's Park are empty, even more so earlier in the day (fortunately, Starbucks near St Paul's Cathedral opens on weekends). The galleries are a triumph: as busy, noisy, beautiful, and dis-jointed as London itself.

I was once having afternoon tea at Sketch with a companion who had just started making collars and cuffs as a new way to accessorise. She was wearing a particularly sweet collar made of Liberty print cotton, with cross-stitched birds. Who should walk in for some tea but Isabella Blow (Wearing a black lace trilby and a cream McQueen suit with a trompe l'oeil black lace print).

Went to see the 'Victoria and Albert, Art and Love' exhibition at the Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace. Daylight was omitted and objects spotlit to create a sumptuous vista of ivory, ormolu, porcelain, marble and diamonds. 

Amongst these riches, personal favourites included a Minton dessert service, with a tiered stand of custard cups, enlivened by a bisque porcelain putti at the summit reaching down to help himself. There was also a bejewelled posy holder that was given by the Empress Eugenie to the Queen when she was on a state visit to France (apparently, The Empress was worried about the Parisians making fun of Queen Victoria's dress sense, and rightly so: Her majesty arrived off the train wearing a clashing dress and bonnet and carrying a bag on which one of her daughters had embroidered a poodle!)

On the way to Patisserie Valerie for lunch we passed the memorial to another Queen, Queen Alexandra, opposite St James Palace, which even on the sunniest days cannot shake off it's aura of melancholic gloom. 

On Friday I went to see Yinka Shonibare's ship in a bottle on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. Such a sensational piece of public art and my favourite 'fourth plinth' installation since Rachel Whiteread's inverted plinth in 2001. Its not particularly easy to see the ship or its sails, (and its proximity to the National Gallery reminds me of his more successful intervention there a couple of years ago), but its a charming addition to London, particularly over the summer, with the sun glinting off of the curve of the bottle. 

I also went to the V&A to see the Horace Walpole/Strawberry Hill exhibition, which was a bizarre assortment of decorative arts (Cardinal Wolsey's hat? seriously? I really thought it would have been silk rather than felt...). Its rather sad that none of these objects will be in the newly restored Strawberry Hill when it opens later this year. You almost have to memorise them and picture them in the original settings. Maybe it was sea-faring reference in Shonibare's work or the Huge Chinese porcelain goldfish bowl at the Walpole (that his cat had drowned in! You could hear the reactions every time somebody read the label), but I really craved fish and chips so we headed to a little pub in Belgravia, tucked away enough to not get the attention from the Chelsea flower show crowd.

Been watching the film 'Gigi', with sets and costumes by Cecil Beaton. I think it's his triumph, more ravishing by far than 'My Fair Lady' (you know 'My Fair Lady' is supposedly a play on the cockney pronunciation of ' Mayfair lady'!). Leslie Caron said that Beaton was the only designer to be on set all day, every day, but I also heard that he would randomly pull the extras at the Bois de Boulogne through the bushes to take photographic portraits of them. I so passionately recommended the film that a friend watched it with her husband, and they disliked it so much that she refers to it as the 'Gigi incident' and refuses to watch any films I recommend. I hope she watched it to the end to see Gigi's beautiful white dress with blackbirds on the shoulders. Apparently when Miss Caron saw the sketch for the costume she exclaimed how wonderful the birds were. Cecil Beaton replied that they were supposed to be bows, but if she wanted birds, she could have birds!

So the other night, in the pub, talk centred on sleep paralysis and my companion searched his i-phone for an image of Henry Fuseli's 'The Nightmare' which I was convinced was in the Tate collection and promised to pay it a visit the next day. 

OK, so it wasn't there, but there are a couple of Fuseli's so I won't lose that bet completely (I was once told that Fuseli was erotically obsessed with hair so I always check out the lady's coiffures in his work). The Tate's (Britain, of course) collection looked resplendent. I was particularly taken with a room painted a very dark grey and hung with John Singer Sargent portraits. Brightly spotlit, they were hung slightly lower than they used to be, revealing the artist's extraordinary use of bright flashes of red and blue in the most unlikely places, like the edges of fingers and ears. It was a real treat to see Sargent's unfinished 'Madame Gautreau' (the scandalous Madame X!). In just one fat brush-stroke he creates the rest of her dress. One brush-stroke that suggests the weight of the fabric, draped and clinging to the petticoats underneath. I've only seen the finished version once. It so nearly destroyed his career, but I came away noticing that the dress has a slight train. It gets lost in the shadows in reproductions.

 

Weekend was commenced with a drink at the Windsor Castle on Campden Hill Road in Kensington. Legend has it that you could see Windsor Castle from it's hilltop location. Not sure if I believe that, I would be surprised if you could see Trellick Tower from there these days......