And every bear that ever there was....

Our small friends came for lunch today, which meant that the bears got to have a picnic.  Aunt Lucy's hat and shawl came in handy for dressing up though, and with a bit of determination (ok, a lot of determination and some help from a big sister) Paddington's shirt fitted as well!

They have gone home to bed now and the house is so very quiet!

Interesting week

A couple of days in Birmingham, where the benign weather made exploring the city on foot a pleasure.  We always enjoy being here and particularly like the area around the Gas Street Basin. 

 

We heard a great concert in Symphony Hall including a stunning performance of Vaughan-Williams 5th Symphony.  We'd gone to the fascinating pre-concert talk and identified a few points to listen out for  - see if you too can "hear the sun come out" in the clip Mark's uploaded.  Gorgeous!  But for the second concert in a row, some poor member of the audience sitting nearby fell ill and needed help during the most tranquil moment of the piece.  It's not an easy task to manage this situation but somehow the SH staff cope with the minimum of fuss.

The following night, we were at an awards dinner at the National Motorcycle Museum where one generous sponsor had arranged a fantastic firework display to celebrate Guy Fawkes.  We oohed and aaahed with the best and enjoyed a fun evening with great entertainment.  The thing is, we've been to this venue several times now and have yet to see a motorcycle of any kind!

I finished the week in Gloucester with a couple of meetings.  Yesterday afternoon, however, I'd booked a place with my County Council colleagues on a photography course.  Absolutely fascinating!  Like most people, I've never been taught to take a photograph but have simply picked it up as I went along.  But Leigh Preston's workshop was so useful and hopefully I'll be able to put his advice to good use.  I've been trying hard to take more thoughfully composed photographs recently, doing my best to resist the temptation to take hundreds of pictures in the hope that one will be ok.  My self-imposed rule to post only unedited photographs on my 365 blog has given me good reason to take time to think and compose and the workshop emphasised how far I've come but also how much more there is to learn.

 

We focused (!) on taking photographs of people and I hope my colleague Jane, who sat opposite me and proved an excellent model* won't mind my posting this thoughtful portrait of her here.  I took Leigh's suggestion of transforming it into black and white once I got home - the only tweak made, since I resisted Jane's request to do a bit of wrinkle removal! 

*excellent model until I tried to use the "smile detect" feature on my camera - her sudden seriousness meant that it would not work!

Update on Saturday, November 8, 2008 at 2:54PM by Gill Thomas

Whilst testing the links in the post above, I had difficulty getting the link to a clip of Vaughan Williams 5th Symphony to play and only after a bit of detective work did we discover that a recent update of Windows knocked out some file associations.  If it doesn't play for you, then perhaps you need to go into your Control Panel and reset a few - in this particular instance, assign a program to play your .mp3 and .m3u files easily.

Point Zero

Some time ago, I read a newspaper article that referred to Point Zero - that very special state needed for something to happen.  In my case, to begin a new arty project.  It's all to do with having the time, no distractions or obligations and the correct materials to hand. As the all-time mistress of displacement activity, I will admit this state has been pretty rare around here!

But with the ironing basket (almost) empty, a couple of free days in my diary and a new book (together with extra emailed ideas, thanks to the creative genius that is Maggie Grey) I gathered a few bits and pieces to play.

 Even though I happened to have exactly the right media, for some reason the results didn't turn out as expected and some further experiments are needed before I can claim total satisfaction with the outcome.

But the surfaces are interesting, the process was therapeutic and I'm looking forward to another go, maybe using a different brand of gesso.

Anyway, the blue and purple paint under the fingernails will be great at the posh do I'm going to on Wednesday!

Enough

I suppose the name of my blog gives a clue to my philosophy of life - if I could be grand enough to have such a thing.   I think the ability to recognise "enough" is greatly under rated and think back to a poster on the wall of the library in the first school I worked.  It was a cartoon of a small rowing boat with two or three hippos squashed in; another one was about to leap onboard and the caption said it all:

More is not always better.

So yesterday, dawdling in the bathroom as often happens on a Sunday morning, I found myself nodding along with Clive James as he spent five minutes voicing a few thoughts on matters of taste, ostentation, yachts, wealth and the US election.  I didn't realise we felt similarly about so many things.

The script of his programme can be read here and there's a listen again link alongside.

Russian Oligarchs may find some parts of the programme upsetting.