How's this for cultural vandalism? Network Rail has painted over a poem that for the past nine years has run the length of a pedestrian tunnel from London's Waterloo station to the Imax cinema on the South Bank. Did they think it was graffiti?
Eurydice by Sue Hubbard was jointly commissioned by the British Film Institute, which runs the Imax, and the Arts Council. Until Network Rail's desecration, the poem had stretched for more than 100 yards along the tunnel, where it was seen and enjoyed by thousands every day. As recently as October the magazine Time Out singled it out as a London treasure.
So what happened? Well, Network Rail thought its tunnel was looking a tad scruffy, so it decided to paint the walls, which covered the poem, using a blue usually reserved for public loos.
Network Rail argues that a couple of the other nearby pedestrian walkways, owned by the local council, had themselves recently been repainted. So it was simply following suit. What sort of argument is that? Unsurprisingly, Hubbard is fuming, as is Bryan Avery, Imax's architect, who was a huge supporter of the project. Rather belatedly, Network Rail has now seen the error of its ways and says it will consider having the poem rewritten on the walls with the help of some local art students.
It's ironic that Hubbard's work, which explores in a contemporary way the myth of Eurydice and Orpheus, had a highly apposite phrase near its end: "I am drowning in blue." Quite.
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So Ruth Mackenzie, longtime arts adviser to the Department for Culture, is to get the gig as artistic director of the Cultural Olympiad. Frankly, she's the establishment choice. Pity that the board was not more daring by going for Alex Poots, as I've suggested before, or Craig Hassall of English National Ballet, who, after all, successfully did Sydney's arts bash for its Olympics.
The choice of Mackenzie has not gone down well with mayor Boris, or with Bill Morris, who is in overall charge of Olympic ceremonies. Then there's Mackenzie's past record. As the head of Scottish Opera in the late 1990s, she was severely criticised for its failings; and while she was running the Chichester Festival Theatre between 2003 and 2005, audiences collapsed.
The wonderful new Medieval and Renaissance galleries at the V&A were only ready in time thanks, in part, to the domestic skills of its director, Mark Jones. Hours before opening, Jones was seen taking off his jacket, picking up a feather duster and cleaning some of the objects that had come out of storage. Mark, if you need some pin money, I can offer you, admittedly at only £10 a hour, some char work, since my splendid Brazilian lady is about to return to South America.
I also really liked the Royal Academy's art exhibition on climate change, now on at its Burlington Gardens "branch". But should we trust the new installation on the facade, CO2morrow, which shows the fluctuating levels of carbon dioxide through 1,440 LEDs, which alter colour according to the levels of pollution? The historic data comes from the University of East Anglia's School of Environmental Studies. Yes, the body whose leaked emails were alleged to show that it was hiding data to support the idea that the world is warming up.
The silent film really ended in the early 1930s. Now it's back - well, the silent short - with 11 airing on Sky One during the Christmas period. Yes, Sky One, best known for The Simpsons and Ross Kemp documentaries.
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The creators of the 10-minute films include top-notch names such as the director Richard Eyre, writers William Boyd, Jeremy Brock, Lucy Gannon and Roy Williams, and the actors Bill Nighy, Tim Spall, Peter Capaldi, Mackenzie Crook and (no, you can't completely escape him) Ross Kemp. I've seen a handful and recommend, in particular, The Three Kings and Ding Dong.
This, however, will be my seasonal event to avoid: the Festival Hall is staging Sandi Toksvig's Christmas Cracker, co-starring that "light-entertainment colossus" Ronnie Corbett and a preggers Denise Van Outen. The second half has John Humphrys, Fiona Shaw, Jon Snow and Lionel Blair alternating in the role of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol.