Yesterday was the most beautiful of beautiful days. Hot. Sunny. That barely happens in July, never mind November. The younger daughter and I sweated on the tennis court in the morning in a proper, sweaty way. Her from the heat, me from the superhuman efforts in the game.

And then, as Mel wasn’t bothered to watch Southampton play Bournemouth (can’t imagine why, other than her near-hatred of the beautiful game), we had to decide. To go to Perth for the Scottish Labour Party conference or over to the Tate Modern where we had tickets for Pop Goes the World, a pop art exhibition (you’d never have guessed that one). Hmmmm, that’s a choice, a six hour journey into the frozen north or a 20 minute tube ride down to the Wobbly Bridge? We love pop art. We fucking hate the Scottish Labour Party.

Ok, sorted. But the exhibition was not full of Lichtenstein and Warhol, this was ‘other’ pop art. From Brazil, under their repressive military rule years, from Rumania under the communists, from all kinds of interesting and non-American places where pop art was used heavily to make political statements. In the states it was just for fun.

The problem being that I like ‘fun’. I like garish pictures of girls with red lips and come-to-bed eyes. I like planes shooting each other out of the skies. I even like cans of Campbells soup and multi-coloured Marylins.

So although this ‘other’ pop art was definitely interesting in concept, it lacked much of the vibrant aesthetic that I really love.

So we went into some other galleries whilst there, as ya do. The first one looked like it featured the works of children with learning difficulties or severe disabilities. But no, it was ‘modernists’ from somewhere in Eastern Europe. At which point it was time to visit my favourite gallery at the Tate Modern. The one where they serve you scones and cream and jam. Its more ‘interactive’ than the other galleries. Nice.

Meanwhile they went ahead without me in Perth. The Scottish Labour Party. Which comprises about 3 mps and 14 people who as yet haven’t defected to the Scottish Nationalists. They didn’t use a conventional conference centre, just the back room in the pub with the pool table covered up so they could put the statue of Lenin on it.

But they decided (all six of them) to vote against the parliamentary party and support the renewal of the Trident missile system. Which Jeremy Corbyn thought was great. That they voted against him and his wishes. Because it ‘makes the party so wonderfully democratic’. Actually Jeremy, it doesn’t. It makes it a totally fucking shambolic and fractured insult to democracy.

I hate Jeremy Corbyn. But love a bit of ‘Wham!’

Happy Monday

A xxxx