Mr Blue Sky

Looking up heavenwards this morning, that Electric Light Orchestra tune was going through my mind.

Why did you have to hide away for so long?  (So Long!)

Well, me and the little pansy faces were smiling today, even if I have got the heaviest and most horrid of colds.  It was one of those mornings when it was good to go outside and feel the sunshine on my face and to breathe in the fresh air.

We haven’t quite got rid of all the scaffolding yet – or rather, it was all gone until a heavy rainstorm last week highlighted one last (please!) weak spot which will involve removing a couple of roof panels.

It was so good to look out over the green fields again and feel that those warm days can’t be far away, can they?

It was a fine morning to visit my own piece of art in the garden, created by my talented friend Paulene, who has an exhibition to hang today at the Menier Gallery with the wonderful title “Between a rock and a hard place”.

To admire the wonderful whorls of the ferns as they unscroll themselves and quietly take over a small corner of the garden.

And to observe the deep shadows in the stone walls, the beautiful sunshine bringing out all those little details that we overlook on an ordinary day.

Oh yes, Mr Blue Sky is living here today!

This week

It’s been a funny old week.  At times, the sun has come out and we’ve really believed that Spring is here.  At other times, we’ve sheltered from the downpours, gazed into the black clouds overhead and wondered when it will finally stop raining.  Just when we’ve sat back and felt relieved that we’ve had our roof repaired, there has been another steady dripdripdrip and our patience has been tested further.

A Bank Holiday meant a short working week, so we can’t quite believe it’s Friday!

 

A rainy holiday Monday was a good opportunity for me to play with my Craft Robo/Silhouette and to discover the “print and cut” feature.  Ooooh, what a clever trick that is!  I downloaded the library card above, printed it out and ran it through the Robo, watching amazed as the machine cut it out perfectly.  So clever!  (Mind you, I did think that having paid 99c for the file, they might have added a cut line to punch the hole, too)

On Tuesday I was working in Cirencester all day, and visited a new place for lunch. I’ve heard so many good things about Abbey Home Farm and my friends were correct, it is well worth a visit.

I went to Carmarthen on Wednesday, to judge the first round of the Rose Bowl competition for the Royal Welsh Show.  The entries were really good – and as always, it was fun to be with like minded friends.

One of the fun competitions was for a knitted Olympic athlete and there were some great entries for that.

I especially liked the swimmer – do you remember when we had to wear those rubber swimming caps with chin straps?!  I didn’t get to judge this competition so could simply stand back and enjoy the characters!

Last night, my dear friend Glenda did a wonderful demonstration of Italian Cooking for my WI, who couldn’t wait to get in there and taste it all!

Finally, today I had a meeting.  Yes, it required me to do the chocolate run to get us through it all!

Whilst I’ve been busy, my Hero has been making plans and booking hotels in four exciting cities.  We’ll visit bottom left next month, bottom right in the Autumn and the top two early next year.  Can you guess where we’re headed?

Heads down

I’ve been writing, watching, thinking and working during these last few days.  There’s not been much time to sit here and record my thoughts, upload pictures and mooch around doing this and that, here and there.  Everything has had a purpose, has been driven by an agenda of some sort and steadily, a backlog of things I’d like to do rather than things I ought to do has been building up.

There really has been too much of this…

And, most certainly, not enough of this!

But I’m lucky.  I really have nothing to complain about.  Those paper-intensive meetings don’t really feature large in my life, I’m usually there because I’ve chosen to be involved in something or other and, best of all, I’m sitting there amongst friends who share my interests and passions.

But I’ve noticed something which worries me of late.  My friends are feeling under pressure.  There’s too much work to do and not enough time to do it.  Margins have been cut, staff numbers reduced to a level where it’s starting to pinch.  Fewer smiles, more sighs and those “challenges” are beginning to appear more like the “problems” they used to be.

What’s interesting is that it’s the same in all my workplaces (because I don’t limit myself to just one!)

Of course, there are serious concerns right now.  We are all anxious about what the future might bring and there are all kinds of unanswered questions which leave us feeling vulnerable, unsure about where we’re heading and wondering who will be the next one to throw in the towel.  But there is one factor which seems to be making things more difficult for us all.

The weather!

I took this photo on the 26th March, in the garden at home.  Now, here we are at the beginning of May and I don’t think my toes have seen the fresh air since that day!  If only we could have a little sunshine on this, a Bank Holiday weekend, we might feel more optimistic?

Hmm.

At least it’s getting warmer!

Good to be home

We’ve been in London for a couple of days.  I always enjoy a day out and staying overnight means that there’s more of a chance to catch up with Edward, to enjoy a relaxed meal (or two) and so on.  But this last week, we’ve each had other reasons for catching the early train to spend time in the city on different days and unusually, we hadn’t managed to coordinate ourselves very well.

We both caught the 0905 train on Thursday though, because that evening, Tra was giving a recital at Pushkin House, a rather interesting venue in Bloomsbury.  Not only that, but my hero was giving a pre-concert talk about his own hero, Joachim Raff.  No pressure then, but every reason for a relaxed, easy afternoon pottering around beforehand.

Every reason, too, for a decent lunch at Nopi.  We sat downstairs with a good view of the kitchen, surveying the stocks on the shelves alongside the table.  Fascinating ingredients and an enviable larder on which to call.  We chose well – the middle eastern flavours served tapas style suits me perfectly.  I am easily intimidated by a huge plateful of food and get easily bored when ploughing my way through a large bowlful of pasta, say.  So, a few choice and rather intriguing flavours kept us well entertained for a couple of hours and the friendly atmosphere was great.  What did we eat?  Well, three dishes each:

• Valdeón cheesecake, pickled beetroot, thyme honey..
• French beans, smoked wheat, tahini lemon dressing, mint..
• Spiced gurnard wrapped in banana leaf, pineapple sambal..
• Seared organic prawns, feta, fennel, Pernod..
• Pork belly, caramelised Nashi pear, grape mustard jus..
• Confit press duck, burnt miso butterscotch, pickled mixed mushrooms..

Yummy, n’est-ce pas?

Tra’s recital was superb; an evening full of warmth and the most wonderful music eloquently put into context by you-know-who beforehand.  Tra’s playing is sublime, her interpretation and the way she communicates her enthusiasm for these rarely performed works is remarkable.  I could have danced listened all night!

A rainy Friday wasn’t quite what we’d planned, but we had things to do.  A brisk walk via Selfridges and Blink, a mooch along Marylebone High Street with a quick stop in Eileen Fisher and a longer linger in Daunts, before meeting Edward for lunch in our favourite Orrery.

Yes, food does tend to feature large, doesn’t it?

We enjoyed another delicious lunch, accompanied by the usual easy conversation with Edward, who always delights and entertains us in a way which inspires the greatest parental pride.  Thankfully, he didn’t have to return to his office that afternoon, so he went off to the London Library to do some research and we planned to stop by Heals, to look at bedside tables, so we went our separate ways on Marylebone Road and we jumped on a bus to Warren Street.

Things were not flowing freely in that area, however.  High-Vis jackets were much in evidence and a police cordon was in place around the top of Tottenham Court Road.  It seemed as though there was “an incident” in progress and we soon learned that a visit to Heals was going to be quite out of the question.  Not wanting to linger in a potentially threatening area, we changed our plans and headed towards Charing Cross Road and Foyles, thinking that a bookshop is never a bad place to spend a rainy afternoon!

But whilst we enjoyed a cup of tea in the Portrait Cafe in Trafalgar Square, the clouds parted and the sun came out.  Too late for us – we were headed back to collect our bags from the hotel and make our way back to Paddington by this time, but there were certainly plenty of people around to enjoy it.

For me, though, it had been enough.  I was ready to return home, to leave the hustle and bustle of the city behind and to spend a quiet weekend in the peace and quiet of Gloucestershire.

At home!

Three artists

Chaplin, Gormley and Mendelssohn. 

Hot on the heels of our cultural day out in Bristol, we were heading north to spend the weekend with our friends in Lytham St Annes.  But we’d already booked tickets for our favourite concert of the season in Symphony Hall – the one where a classic silent movie is shown.  So on Friday night, we stayed in Birmingham.

The programme this year included a short Charlie Chaplin film, One AM, followed by the full length movie, City Lights.  Before this main programme, however, we were treated to the four winning films in a Silent Movie animation competition run by Birmingham City Council recently – what a bonus!

We’re not particular Chaplin fans and really, we’d been hoping that they’d show a Valentino film this year, or something similar.  Having said that, the whole experience is so terrific, we’d go to see anything, really.

Anyway, we settled down to watch as the orchestra struck up the music and within seconds, we were laughing.  Quite how Charlie Chaplin does (did) it, I have no idea – it really would be remarkable to create such a visual feast today, using all the technological trickery we have available.  But knowing how these films were created, we could only sit back, gasp with amazement at his skill, laugh until our sides hurt and occasionally hold our breaths as some tragic scene unfolded.

As ever, Symphony Hall was well filled for the evening with people of all ages who sat so quietly throughout, we’d have heard a pin drop.

Wonderful.

Antony Gormley was the next artist to feature in our weekend, in the form of his “Another Place”, on Crosby seashore.  I’ve wanted to see the hundred figures which are placed standing and looking out to sea, for some time and this seemed a great opportunity to visit them.

Except, we hadn’t thought to check the tide times!

Actually, it didn’t matter too much.  It was an easy place to park, to get out our coats and hats and enjoy a little bracing sea air.

It was very windy though, and from time to time my hero got an unexpected shower as a larger than average wave crashed against the sea wall.

As we walked, the figures became more visible, partly due to the changing tide, partly because at this end of the promenade, they seem to be set a little higher, or perhaps in shallower water.

By the time we’d walked back to the car, enjoyed a hot drink from the burger van parked along the way and read the paper a while, the tide had turned enough to see some complete figures at the other end of the beach.  We didn’t have the time or the inclination to walk back up there however and will simply have to return here.

And what of the third artist, Mendelssohn?  Well, our friend Olga was singing in a performance of Elijah on Saturday evening and we were very pleased to go along and support her.  It brought our little cultural break to a grand finale!