Saturday

Well, the news on the street is that the sinister chap with the snowball catapult is looking anxious now the policeman has arrived with two sets of handcuffs…

I spotted the Lego Advent Calendars this year and whilst getting a StarWars version for Edward and Alex to enjoy, I fell for the simple Lego Town advent calendar for us too.  Yes, there is still a child in us all – well in me, anyway.  Behind the door on day one was the snowballer – it took me a while to realise that the white bricks were snowballs, I’ll admit.  Yesterday, constructing the catapult was no easy task – these little kits come with no instructions and it’s quite some time since I passed my Lego training.  After that, today’s policeman was a cinch.  Very cute, but I can see why the commenters on the Lego site are disappointed at the non-Christmas theme and would share their disappointment had I been with a small child opening up the doors each day.

The Journal is now underway and taking shape.  Fortunately, the ArtFund magazine arrived just when I needed a curtain and the cover was cut up before we’d even opened the thing!  Nothing is sacred in this house.  The Manifesto is from Shimelle’s class notes this year.

The first spread tells the tale of my two Christmas dinners on Thursday – one very traditional and the other at Jamie’s Italian.  I’m still working on these pages, adding bits and pieces as the whim takes me.  The red twinkle was an appropriate choice as we drivers were foregoing the wine in favour of the Glitterberry J2O the other night.  Fun!

Day 2 is about the Swedish bits and pieces which are here and there in the house following our recent trip.  For this, I used one of Ali Edwards’ overlays – so easy and rather slick, it made me wonder if I might continue in more of a digital style and stop faffing about with glue and scissors.  But my hero agreed that part of the charm of these journals is the three dimensional, quirky character and so the faffing will continue, in this journal at least.

But around here, one question continues to preoccupy the pair of us.

Where are we going to put the Christmas Tree?

Getting started

There has been so much going on around here that I’ve found it really hard to focus, to settle down and actually DO something.  I need no motivation to begin – simply gathering previous Christmas journals reminds me of how precious these things are.  But trying to cut that first page, to decide the dimensions and the theme of this year’s book was just proving incredibly difficult.

I began the day well before 8am, emptying my wardrobe of everything so that James, the builder, could begin work on taking up that part of the floor and removing the architrave and so on.  The easiest part was putting everything into boxes; the hardest part bringing everything down to the garage, where it will be stored for the time being.  That’s when living in a three storey house loses some of its appeal, I can tell you.  Fortunately, I had a hero’s help and by meeting at the bend on each flight of stairs, we managed to get all fifteen plastic boxes down there in fairly good time.

In the midst of all of this, I was having two fairly important conversations with colleagues, soon to develop into three intense discussions needing careful thought and more than a little referencing.

All whilst James was drilling bits of the floor away upstairs.  Nice.

One thing we didn’t have to worry about was cooking.  We have the most amazing Steam Oven in our kitchen which is used without fail every day and which has never given us any trouble for the ten years since it was installed.  But just before we left for Boston, it developed a leak and we discovered a puddle on the floor.  Not only that, but the leak dripped through into the conventional oven beneath it and shorted the circuit board, we think.  So, for the time being, we have no cooker – just a hob and a microwave, which certainly concentrates the mind when the question “what’s for supper?” springs to mind!  (Spaghetti Bolognese today…)

So, feeling relaxed about that, late in the afternoon I finally found my mojo – or rather, I decided to just dive in and get going, even if I decided to scrap the first few goes and rethink it after a page or two.  I picked up the key piece I’d selected for the first page and sighed.

I think a proofreader is needed at Lost and Found, don’t you?

(I just googled “December Spelling error” and discovered the company are shipping replacements, which is a generous response, don’t you think?)

Let the fun begin

I’m still obsessing over the size of my journal, the numbering for the pages, the style and colour…I really do need to simply getonwithit.

Today I have two Christmas dinners to enjoy.  This lunchtime, I enjoyed a rather less than traditional lunch at Jamies in Cheltenham in the company of some old friends and colleagues.  This evening will be more of a turkey and all the trimmings affair with my WI friends from Avening.

The Mince Pies at Jamies this lunchtime were divine!  Here’s the recipe for what looks like the same thing, but those we tasted were heavy on the black pepper we think, which added a truly delicious twist to the old favourite.  I must give it a try.

Whilst I was out enjoying myself, my Hero was having fun at the dentist.  Life is just not fair, is it?

Home without ado

(Today, there’s a general strike of public employees in the UK and fears have been reported that as a result of Border Control staff being on strike, waits at Heathrow could be up to 12 hours.  We were already booked on a BA flight scheduled to arrive at Heathrow at 8.30am on the morning of the strike)

As we dropped off our bags at Logan Airport, the BA clerk asked if we’d like to change to an earlier flight.  We hummed for the shortest of times before declining the kind thought – after all, it’s a quicker journey on a 747 and we had already secured our favourite seats.

But of course, we were a little anxious about what might await us at Heathrow and no amount of reasoning that we are registered IRIS users, could have gone “Fast Track” through immigration and have both also got scannable passports too could save us from the worry that we simply didn’t know how it would be.  Not only that, but neither did anyone else!  So, we settled in for the five and a half hours sleep that’s the journey home and were happy to fly over our little corner of the world around 7.30am this morning, as we were finishing our breakfast and preparing to land.

At 8am, we walked off the plane to be greeted by a posse of smiling people wearing bright purple T shirts giving clear directions of where to go for connecting flights or to passport control.  Everyone was steered into clearly designated channels right from the start and whoever had been out with those black poles and webbing barriers had done a great job.  We walked past crates marked “Passenger Welfare” containing apples, KitKats and other snacks – everything had been prepared ready, though thankfully, not a bit of it was needed. 

When we arrived in the immigration hall we gasped…it was empty!  Every passport control desk was staffed and we all sailed right through.  We used the IRIS machine as usual, but none of those scanning their own passport nor the others going through the regular check had to wait. 

No emergency KitKats for us then.

Down in the baggage reclaim it was a similar story.  Staff were on hand to offload the luggage as it arrived, to avoid the chance of it piling up as the owners were delayed earlier in the system.  But of course, with no delays, we simply walked up and picked up our suitcases already there and waiting for us and wheeled through the Customs post and out to our waiting car.

At 8.30am we were on the motorway.

Last day in Boston

Tradition has it that we leave one place outstanding for the morning we’ve packed and checked out of the hotel and in Boston, that usually means a stroll up to the Museum of Fine Arts, one of our all-time favourites.

Today was no exception and we were able to get there just before it opened, in time to take a photograph of what I now think of as Jordi’s Native American!

The first eyecatching exhibit was…well, of course, it ought to have been that enormous reproduction of one of the Degas Nudes but actually, it was Dale Chiluly’s Lime Green Icicle Tower!

Positioned in the new atrium area of the museum, where it catches the light and everyone’s attention, it is a truly magnificent piece.

It invites a closer look, of course and the glass shimmers in both natural sunshine and the spotlights which feature it.

The reflections in the highly polished base are interesting too.

After that little excitement, I’m sorry to say that we didn’t really take the Degas exhibition to our hearts – something about the voyeuristic nature of his work, most probably.  Stunning pastels and of course, wonderful observations.  But ultimately, we both felt that the process was more captivating than the product – especially the monotype prints where he had begun with a completely black inked plate and worked backwards, as it were.  I also love his quickly formed sculptures of the dancers, standing in awkward poses and admire the fine lines of the body, the solid stance and slightly unfinished nature of the things.  So, we brought away a few positive thoughts and left the bulk of the sketches of brothels behind…

 

For a while, we pottered about visiting our favourites.  The black and white photography of the 1930s, the Tiffany glass, the delightful portraits of the “Boston School” and the large Singer Sargeant portraits which we both love to see every time we come here.

Of course, there is always the chance for an unexpected delight and standing in front of a pair of black double doors, we wondered if we should go in.  What was in there?  The Clock?  Christian who?  Marclay?  Never heard of him…

The decision to allow our curiosity to take over was the best one of the morning!  Probably all you tuned in, culturally aware readers will have known all about this from the BBC News report from this time last year.  We knew nothing.  this had completely passed us by.

 (If the embedded YouTube video of a BBC news report doesn't seem to be working,  Click here)

We sat and watched, not realising at first that the time in the film was the actual time but as it gradually dawned on us that we were watching something in real time, both of us became rather anxious about what might happen at noon, which was rapidly approaching.  But 12 o’clock came and went and still we sat, captivated by the whole experience, the emotional roller coaster, the nostalgia of seeing familiar faces and clips from films we recognised.  Eventually, we had to summon up our senses and leave…because we could have stayed there for hours.

 (If this embedded video doesn't seem to be working, you can watch a clip of the Clock here)

As it happens, this is part of the piece we saw – Colin Firth appearing twice and Steed looking terribly young.  These three minutes give a good impression, I think and perhaps offer some kind of explanation as to why we found ourselves returning to the subject time and again for the rest of the day.

Marvellous.

But it really was time for us to go.  We returned to our favourite Legal Seafoods and enjoyed a late lunch before going to the airport and checking in for our flight home.  Quite what lies in store for us tomorrow, with the strikes and all manner of chaos threatened in the immigration hall, who knows?  Hopefully, the stars will be in alignment, the wind in the right direction and we’ll sail through.

Fingers crossed.