David Bowie is…

 

On Friday we went to the V and A museum with the hope of seeing the Bowie exhibit. After already attempting to see it in the previous week and failing to even get into the queue, we decided to treat it like a normal work day and got up at 6am to be there at around half 8am! It paid off, however, as when we arrived there were already about 50 people waiting but the queue rapidly built up behind us and by the time the doors opened at 10am there must have been about 500 people waiting to see the exhibit! 

When we got to the desk, I was lucky enough to get a ticket at student price, which was only £9 rather than £15, which was a bonus! Furthermore, getting up at the crack of dawn certainly had its perks, as we were allowed to go to the 11.15am entry which was surprising as we had half expected to be allocated entry for gone 2pm! 

 

When we got in, I wasn't sure what to expect*, but the first room was set out to give the early history of Bowie, i.e. before the development of Ziggy so it doesn't take a genius to work out that this particular room would be busy. Of course, everyone wants to read the 'origins' story** so it became a glorified  bottleneck in which people were continuing to queue in that very British manner and nobody knew if it was 1) socially acceptable to wander around the room freely, or 2) if we would miss something vitally significant to the whole thing. Besides this fact, when you pay £15 per person, you don't particularly want to skip bits of the exhibition. The problem was that people were reading so slowly it would take them about 10 minutes to read a tiny piece of information! 

Once we got past this first room, though, things seemed to speed up quite considerably. There were a load of both Bowie and Ziggy's costumes which were absolutely fantastic to look at! If you have never seen any of his clothing choices, you should definitely Google them (although I'm not so naive that I expect you to be reading this if the topic doesn't interest you!).

At first, when I found out the cost of tickets, I had felt that it was a little overpriced, but in retrospect it was definitely good value for money. We easily spent 3 hours there, and there was so much to see! I had half expected to be ushered along, but we weren’t (which was probably why certain areas became so packed!) and we were allowed to spend as long as we wanted.

I think the most enlightening part of the day was in one of the smaller rooms, where there were several film props and a screen showing clips from various films David Bowie had starred in. I honestly didn't realise how much acting he had done throughout his life but when you remember how into mime and how many different personas he has had throughout his career, it's no real surprise! So there we have it, an educational day all round, with a huge list of films for me to start watching! Best get cracking then!

 

 

*and unfortunately I can't show you what it was like as photography wasn't allowed - as usual it didn't stop the irritating people who leaned over everyone else to take, let's face it, illegal photographs!

**disclaimer, the origins story is just what I've decided to refer to it as for the duration of this post