I had been trying and hoping to view the ‘Man and Beast’ exhibition by Francis Bacon for some time which was being held at the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly. One thing or another had acted as an obstruction and so with just 10 days left before its closure, I booked it for an early Sunday afternoon. I don’t venture much into London anymore. I was born and brought up there, spent many years between my 20s and 30s hustling in the metropolis and have seen it slowly morph meretriciously into a nothing more than a monstrous shopping mall with streets simply lined with gaudy corporate logos. But the one attraction it still has to offer is art with its huge galleries decorated with paintings by the masters.
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51 years ago, in 1970 Joni Mitchell wrote the melodic highly compelling song ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ with the lyrics “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot” to alert her listeners to the fact that “you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone” which included various different things including trees, animals, her old man and of course paradise. Paradise, of course, comes in many different forms to many different people.
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