6.00 am. Arose! Into the day and off to the bus station to join the coach for Liverpool. The morning temperature had dropped noticeably, within a day. The autumnal air was invigorating:

8.11 am. The low-lying light filtered through an ethereal ground mist and topped the mountains. (I recalled Yosemite.) Approaching Ponterwyd:

Once the last of our number had been picked up at Welshpool station, we slowly headed north for Liverpool and the Albert Dock to see the Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots exhibition at the Tate Liverpool:

We’d arrived earlier than anticipated and before the period assigned to our timed tickets. A wait was inevitable. Having bundled our bags into a cupboard (for which I, as ‘group leader’, was key holder for the morning), I acclimatised over hot chocolate and walked the harbour until noon. Notes from ‘The Black Notebook’ (March 10, 2015-), 39-40:

the significance of the more figurative titles / use of the rough side of hardboard as an absorbent surface / 1953+ works anticipate late Picasso / extraordinary control and draughtsmanship / figural-abstract cohesion / he was always looking back at the European, grand master tradition / art history has tended to reduce him to the ‘drip painter’ / the underlying calligraphy of the earlier works emerges more self consciously in the later period / late paintings anticipate the ‘new image in painting’ phenomenon of the early 1980s / building opaque paint — layer by layer — by a process of superimposition / in this process, the earlier marks cannot be changed, only responded to by applying subsequent layers / his return to figuration coincided with a re-assertion of colour / Glen Ligon Encounters and Collisions: many artists of my generation exhibit a consistency of concept but a variety of process and technical style / ideas become the embodiment of style, instead.

1.40 pm. A walk into the city centre …

… up Paradise Street (a misnomer if ever there was one) to the Walker Art Gallery. Always a joy:

I attended the Reality exhibition of British realist painting are from Sickert to the present. There were two works by one of the School’s alumnus, Clive Head. Quite a number of the contemporary artists came from other than the London schools. Mercifully, these days, good artists can come from anywhere; it’s not where they were taught, or who taught them, but who they are that makes the difference.

3.30 pm. A return to Paradise and the Albert Dock to visit the Beatles’ Story. Notes from ‘The Black Notebook’ (March 10, 2015-), 41:

unsure whether the artefacts are the actual ‘relics’ or types of objects associated with the B / my friend Andrew’s brother had a Hoffner violin bass, like Paul McC  / mum and dad took me to see Yellow Submarine (1968) at a cinema in London. They were appalled; I was enthralled / this was the first time that I became aware of the widening gap between their and my sense of qualitative visual culture / I heard about Lennon’s murder while going to breakfast at my hall of residence in Caerleon, Gwent

In the late afternoon, under the darkening sky, the waterfront area of the old docks was cast in a peculiar and consoling melancholy — the sense of another place in another life. (I recalled, too, the Battery district of Manhattan.)  5.00 pm. We made our way home amid the crawl of peak time traffic that bled from the city. 7.30 pm. The dark country roads felt interminable:

8.50 pm. Arrived.