"...to have the last say from beyond the grave..."

August 28, 2024 10:57 AM

Lord Sainsbury didn't like the columns.
posted by dfm500 (17 comments total)

":to those who find this note"

all that needed was a "hark" or "harken" at the beginning of the text.

It's worth seeing the letter that was left by Lord Sainsbury.

-----

speaking of Saino's:"How I got banned from Sainsbury's" classic british copypasta.

Yesterday I was at my local Sainsbury's buying a large bag of Winalot dog food and was in the checkout queue when a woman behind me asked if I had a dog.

I told her, I didn't have a dog, I was starting the Winalot Diet again. (This admission made shoppers and some of the staff turn around attention to my story; as the story went on, quite a crowd formed.)

I added that I probably shouldn’t start the diet again, because I ended up in hospital last time, but I'd lost 2 stone by the time I woke up in intensive care with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IVs in both arms.

I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way that it works is to load your pockets with Winalot nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry. The food is nutritionally complete so it works well and I was going to try it again.

Horrified, she asked me if I ended up in intensive care because the dog food poisoned me . I told her no, I was put into intensive care after being hit by a car. The accident happened when I was in the middle of the road during a good old-fashioned session of me licking my own balls.
posted by lalochezia at 11:11 AM on August 28, 2024 [24 favorites]

This guy was a Knight of the Garter.
posted by praemunire at 11:21 AM on August 28, 2024

I believe that's what's known as a shagging dog story
posted by chavenet at 11:21 AM on August 28, 2024 [2 favorites]

Being silently at war with some piece of interior design is quite the British upper class thing.

(See also: Downton Abbey, To Say Nothing Of The Dog, the life of Oscar Wilde)
posted by ocschwar at 11:54 AM on August 28, 2024 [3 favorites]

> It's worth seeing the letter that was left by Lord Sainsbury.

i like how they SCREAM CONSTANTLY AT FUTURE PEASANTS. just like my own relatives
posted by ver at 12:29 PM on August 28, 2024 [4 favorites]

Can I just say how funny it is that the president of Sainsbury’s was Lord Sainsbury?? Like off I go to buy aliments from Duke Kroger. Clipping coupons for the Earl of Safeway
posted by theodolite at 1:29 PM on August 28, 2024 [8 favorites]

Can I just say how funny it is that the president of Sainsbury’s was Lord Sainsbury?? Like off I go to buy aliments from Duke Kroger. Clipping coupons for the Earl of Safeway

Looks like it was a life peerage. So more like if someone elevated Mr Kroger (or more accurately, his wealthy grandson who was politically active and spent lots of money on charity) to be a lord-for-life.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 2:05 PM on August 28, 2024 [6 favorites]

There was a little trend in the 1980s for museums in the UK to have a postmodernist extension; the Tate (the original Tate, now Tate Britain) has a shiny bullshit area on the side that's mostly stairs. A few years later CADCAM programs became widely available and wiped out the entire trend, and you got stuff like the Bilbao Guggenheim, but for a short period people who could draw a lot of windows and stairs had a very productive time.
posted by The River Ivel at 2:12 PM on August 28, 2024 [3 favorites]

I just feel the need to correct the article in that it’s not Lord John Sainsbury, but John, Lord Sainsbury.

Why yes, I’ve read quite a bit of online discussion about The West Wing in my time, why do you ask?
posted by Navelgazer at 9:16 PM on August 28, 2024 [4 favorites]

I think it’s a shame that Prince Charles was allowed to impose a shit pastiche on this corner of Trafalgar Square, and amazing to hear that even the man who volunteered to fund it knew it was terrible and inserted this bizarre note disclaiming it. The mental state involved is hard to imagine. Rebellious toadying?
posted by Phanx at 11:22 PM on August 28, 2024 [1 favorite]

a shit pastiche on this corner of Trafalgar Square

It was widely criticised at the time (this 1987 article by Gavin Stamp is perhaps the best statement of the case against it), but it has a lot of fans as well. The Twentieth Century Society (which Stamp helped to found) called it a "thrilling meeting of modernism, contemporary construction, English classicism, steel, stone and glass, symbolism, context and spatial creativity". The main problem with it is that it was repurposed as the main entrance to the National Gallery, which it was never intended to be. And after fighting your way through the crowds in Trafalgar Square, it can feel like a gruelling slog toiling up the main staircase before you get to see any paintings.

Being silently at war with some piece of interior design is quite the British upper class thing

See also the plaque on the SOAS building in Russell Square, "the only building in London to bear a sign apologising for being built".
posted by verstegan at 12:49 AM on August 29, 2024 [6 favorites]

Isn’t the main entrance still the portico, which is part of the original building?
posted by Phanx at 2:07 AM on August 29, 2024

Oh, hey, you're right, they've reinstated the portico entrance as an actual entrance! And provided information on their security procedures too!

The last time I visited was pre-pandemic, and at that time (and for some years previously), the portico was exit only. If you were a member, you could go in through the little entrance on the right. If not, you had to go in through the Sainsbury Wing, get through the constantly changing security process (bag search? metal detector arch? both? who can say?), run the gauntlet of people asking for a donation, figure out where to queue if you were there for a paid exhibition, and then finally go and see some art. Or, in my case, go and find somewhere to shake for ten minutes while I calmed down from all that, and THEN go and see some art.

At no point in all of that was there an obvious moment in which you got to stop and admire the architecture, or really pay any attention to it at all beyond looking for clues to where to go next. I realise I don't have a clue what the Sainsbury Wing even looks like, aside from the staircase: from outside my attention is wholly on the original building, from inside I've been too distracted trying to make sure I'm doing everything right.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 3:17 AM on August 29, 2024 [2 favorites]

The last time I visited was pre-pandemic, and at that time (and for some years previously), the portico was exit only.

I'd been visiting London at least every other year since about 2008 through to just pre-pandemic, and I've never not been able to use the portico as an entrance. Are the timelines splitting???
posted by praemunire at 7:30 AM on August 29, 2024 [2 favorites]

Huh. Yes, one of us is not in the same timeline they started in.

Sucks that both timelines had the pandemic. German measles, right?
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 12:38 PM on August 29, 2024 [2 favorites]

(More seriously, I wonder if the portico was an entrance in the mornings and an exit in the afternoons, or something. If so, I wish I'd known, because I found it all so stressful I almost stopped going completely, and I was also quite cross that they'd decided to put such a wonderful entrance out of bounds.)
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 12:41 PM on August 29, 2024

It looks like the portico entrance was closed for a year for renovations and then reopened in August 2005. But there are also references elsewhere to the Sainsbury Wing becoming the "de facto" main entrance?

Checking, the last time I went to London pre-pandemic was actually Christmas 2017. But I would've gone to the National Gallery, there is never a time I don't go to the National Gallery. Maybe they had the portico entrance open for the holiday crowds?
posted by praemunire at 7:31 PM on August 29, 2024