Queuing, Bristol, Thursday 6th August 2009

I've been a big admirer of Banksy, ever since my daughter Lucy got me a book of photographs of his graffiti. His work is very political, but with a sharp witticism aimed at society's easy targets (bureaucracy, the police, that sort of stuff). Now he's got an exhibition at the Bristol City Museum & Art Gallery, hatched in secrecy with a handful of museum staff. I wanted to see if he'd sold out on his beliefs.

Come early, Lucy had warned us, the queue is enormous. And indeed it was. The museum opened at ten, we joined the queue at nine, and we finally got into the exhibition at eleven. The queue zig zagged all the way up and down the side street next to the museum.

Enterprising tradesmen were positioned at strategic points, selling the punters ice cream, sandwiches and the Big Issue.
There were a lot of cool people in the queue - hip student types, sitting cross legged on the road playing bridge, or gin rummy, or something chinese with ebony playing pieces. I personally wouldn't sit in any Bristol road, having seen what the locals do in that area after a night out.

Other people in the queue, evidently healthy but just too lazy to stand for a couple of hours, had brought folding chairs. I wondered if they'd thought this through, a) because they wouldn't be allowed to take them in to the museum, and b) once the queue was moving, the chairs would be an irritation rather than a comfort. Experience has taught me never to clutter myself with any stuff that has the potential to be left in pubs, on buses, on trains or in restaurants.

Like my dog, for example.

At ten, the queue started moving, fairly rapidly as it turned out. The cool card players doggedly continued playing, but the Jenga players were clearly experiencing some difficulty. We zig zagged up and down, meeting the same annoying people dragging their folding chairs along the ground. Eventually the cool kids packed their cards away, but the chair bound continued to sit for ten seconds, then pull their chairs ten feet along the ground, to justify their decision to bring them along. It looked like very hard work to me.

Eventually we got to the entrance, passed a pile of discarded folding chairs, and went in.

I'm sure you'd like to know more about the exhibition, but this blog isn't an art review, so I've attached a link at the end of this post.
Has Banksy sold out? Yes. But don't let that put you off visiting. Hurry though, the exhibition ends this month.

Also, if you're a cool type of person who likes to sit in a vomit and dog excrement stained street playing mahjongg or some such, then I apologise if I offended you. No actually, I don't, but I thought you might find this web site useful:

http://www.weeklygripe.co.uk/a97.asp

And here's the BBC news report of the the Banksy exhibition:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts_and_culture/809681

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