Greenwich

Finally, a morning when it wasn’t raining so I went to Greenwich. I have a good view of St Paul’s from my hotel window, so there was a pleasing symmetry in seeing Wren’s old Naval Hospital as well.

I visited the exhibition of astronomy photographs in the Maritime Museum: quite wonderful. At times I had difficulty in comprehending exactly what I was seeing: the nighttime scene taken with so long an exposure that it looked like daytime; the constellations with colours that human eyes could never actually see; the single photograph of the sun that was composed of a year’s worth of daily shots. My head hurt so much that it was a relief to turn back to the beautiful photo of Glastonbury Tor – which is a single image with no filtering to represent “unseen” colours.

The abstract beauty of some of the images was breathtaking: the Northern Lights looking like fairyland, the moon looking like a water biscuit, the sun’s surface looking like a fluffy hearth rug at risk of sparks from an open fire. Jackson Pollock, eat your heart out.