Michael Morris, one of London's most established arts impresarios, had a troubled air. "It's getting serious," he said. He was talking about fitting everything in. According to Morris, there are too many "must-sees" in the capital at the moment, and there is no sign of any let-up. "Even if things are on for three months, you find yourself missing them because there is too much on," he said. Which means that events need to be increasingly bizarre to swim high into people's consciousness. Either that, or they need to use the headlining celebrity of the moment, which is why David Lan should be congratulated for casting Sienna Miller in his production of As You Like It.
I was talking to Morris on London Bridge while a man in white plastic shoes crept towards us at the speed of a garden snail. This illustrated the point perfectly. Why bother with the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition, which happens every year, when you can see an absolute one-off - namely, a man walking at the pace of growing lichen? Slow Walk (commissioned by Morris's company, Artangel) was being performed by Ohad Fishof in celebration of Longplayer, a very long piece of music that has been playing for five years (and will go on for the next 995) in a lighthouse opposite the Millennium Dome.
Fishof, dressed entirely in white, began his perambulation at 8am. This was no straightforward dawdle; he was walking with extreme purpose and care, flexing each foot with steady deliberation before placing it precisely half an inch in front of the other. Sometimes he stretched. If fellow pedestrians accosted him, he would smile and speak to them in monosyllables. It took him three and a half hours to get halfway; he eventually completed the return journey in nine and a half hours.
"You should have been here this morning at rush hour," said Morris, explaining that for about 90 minutes, Fishof - a lone, snowy-white totem of anti-velocity - bravely breasted a wave of City-bound office workers going the other way, and at some moments was roughly barged into and almost trampled down. "I think we will do this on Midsummer's Day every year in a different city," announced Morris. "Can you stay a bit?" I explained that I had a very busy day. "You should get into some Slow Walking," cautioned Morris, despite his own admission of living at fever pitch trying to mop up London's permanently huge cultural programme.
The next night, I went to Hampstead Heath for the opening of The Writer, Giancarlo Neri's monumental table and chair, which have been positioned on the lower slopes of Parliament Hill for the summer. Again, sheer curiosity has made this a must-see that will doubtless rapidly gain iconic status. I took the four junior Millards with me, who squawked with pleasure on seeing Neri's vast pieces of furniture. One immediately took all her clothes off. Well, art does that to some people. After a tussle, she agreed to put her trousers back on, and charged off with the others to throw dust and play around the steel trunks that are the table and chair legs.
I milled around the party. The Hampstead literati were out; Zadie Smith was there, as were Joan Bakewell and Deborah Moggach. "I've just seen Salman Rushdie going under the table," Moggach told me. Now that's a phrase I suspect has never been aired before.
