A Little Bit of Normal – A Day Trip to London

A Sculpture In The City Experience.

On the 19th July, Stephen and I took a trip to the city of London to take in the Sculptures of the city. This is an exhibition that has been going on for 19 years, where there are 18 Sculptures scattered around with detailed descriptions to what they were, and why they were designed as they appeared.

With Stephen being so interested in Art, this seemed like a great opportunity to experience an exhibition out of the Borough he lives in and show him how far he has come in his journey, and he can experience days out like everybody else.

I had planned this event over the course of a week and put it into a budgeting exercise whereby Stephen would pay for his trip himself. He did so with ease and hearing him say “no problem” when I mentioned saving to buy his train ticket left me feeling proud of him.

We looked at the route we would take and arranged the time we would meet at Slough Station. Stephen was shocked as to how quickly the day had come about but also pleasantly surprised that Browns did what we said we would do – allowing him this experience to cement his motivation and progress so far.

We met at Slough Station at 10am and Stephen had treated himself to a new hair revamp and a high vis jacket jokingly adding “you will not lose sight of me!”

It was a shame my travelcard did not feel as positive about the day as Stephen or I did, as every time I used my ticket, I needed help as the barriers would not accept my travelcard! Having Stephen standing on the other side of the barriers laughing and always telling me “Your ticket doesn’t like you Ashley” made me laugh off how annoying a train ticket could actually be.

After arriving in London, we were able to locate the first Sculpture in minutes and in total managed to get around 17 of the 18. There were a few occasions I would see Stephen analysing a sculpture his facial expression looking like “what’s that?”. The answer to his facial expression I couldn’t answer but we both would read the description to get our answer, even though the description would simply be about things so simple such as a Chair or a Tree.

After walking for a few hours, visiting around 7 of the sculptures, there was only so much more use of sat navigation we could take until we took a break at sculpture number 8 -10.
We sat down and had a nice Indonesian lunch and spoke about how busy the lifestyle is in the city but how much we take it for granted and we appreciate such things as the tall buildings that some people are so used to casually walking past them.

It was at this point we decided to continue with our sculpture search and it was very nice to see Stephen point out some different artwork, not on our course and explain what they were and who some pieces were created by.

When I mentioned to Stephen some of these sculptures were getting harder to find, he responded with “that’s because we have walked past it already”. With both of us laughing as it was not the first time this had happened on our trip.

We managed to get round 15 Sculptures and took a seat before continuing finishing off the last 2 before heading to the train station where Stephen managed to walk straight through, having to wait for me to be assisted through. Stephen ended the day by saying he appreciated me taking him out and how he looks forward to doing something so normal again.