A few days here and there

A bit of April sunshine, the company of good friends and a weekend away to look forward to.  Mary and Diana were here from California, doing a bit of a recce for a forthcoming tour, so it was good that our corner of the world was looking at its best.  Standing on Crickley Hill at the viewpoint which many of our friends will recognise, we were able to identify the landmarks last Thursday morning.

We were on our way to Ledbury, where the door of the Shell House Gallery caught our eye moments before the offerings on the window alongside.

 

Tempting, n’est-ce pas?

Tempting, too, was the lovely local butcher’s shop opposite, where the secrets of black pudding, scotch eggs and faggots were shared!

Ledbury has many secret corners and a surprising number of excellent shops, including Hus & Hem where we could have spent a fortune!  For once, it was my hero who couldn’t resist a purchase – the most comfortable slippers ever, he’s declared.

A fun night at the pub with our sweet friends and we said our goodbyes and made arrangements for Friday morning, when we had a very early start.  We left them fast asleep and hoped that everything would go according to plan with keys, burglar alarms and Ian, the painter!

It did.  Of course.

Familiar territory

Unfinished embroidery projects, bits of half worked needlepoint and carrier bags with odd pieces of knitting in them, rolled up with the magazine which contains the pattern.  I think we all have such things tucked away somewhere and occasionally, I pull one out and think I’ll finish it.  But more often than not, the mere sight of it is enough to remind me why I became bored with it in the first place and I put it all back in the bag and stuff it back where it came from.  At home, these things were put behind the sofa and when we cleared Mummy’s house, sure enough, there they all were.  Did I add her UFOs to mine?  I’ll admit to keeping a couple!

So when I finished my meeting in Cirencester this morning and poked my head around the gallery door, my eyes fell on some familiar things.  There they all were!  All those half done cushion covers, the single socks and the pieces of embroidery with the needle still tucked in.  Tales of the Unfinishable is in town and clearly this project has hit the spot with a good many people, just as it did with me.

The exhibition is a kind of tent, with the colourful pieces on the outside tempting the visitor inside where the background stories are being told.  As I wandered around reading some of the short tales accompanying the actual pieces, I heard the voices of the contributors playing through the loudspeaker.  I was the only one there, so had a good look around, untroubled by anyone else – lucky me!

Of course, I had favourites.  Who hasn’t started a blackwork project like this with great enthusiasm, enjoying the rigour of the stitch without any of the worry of which colour should be in the needle?  But after a while, such detail begins to challenge and even after many hours work, there still seems so much still to do.  This is exactly the type of embroidery which I could find, stuffed in a cupboard here at home and which I have undoubtedly thought that I will finish some day.  One day.  Maybe.

Occasionally, at WI, we’ve had a bit of a swap shop, where people bring their unfinished projects and swap them for a different one.  Somehow, someone else’s unfinished work is more interesting than my own and of course, it doesn’t come with any …  well, I’ve tried hard to avoid the word, but I think you’ll know I’m talking about “guilt” here?  Is there guilt packed away with those bits of unfinished work then?  I don’t really know why, but yes, there is.  Not always, but definitely sometimes.  Did anyone mention feeling bad about having so many unfinished pieces of work stashed away or was it just me?  I looked around the exhibition to find a piece which took me home, so to speak.

And there it was.  In the last case I found the piece which was so typical of the kind of project I found behind the sofa.  A half finished cardigan, started with enthusiasm and the best of intentions but ultimately just too boring to knit.  I loved reading the story which accompanied it and wondered just how many such things there are in the world.  Why do we hang on to them all when we know, in our hearts that we’ll never finish them?

What a great concept for an exhibition, then!  What a marvellous idea to bring out all of those half finished wonders and prompt our memories like this!  If only I’d thought of it first, I could have populated the whole exhibition with my unfinished work alone

Highly recommended, the exhibition seems to finish here, having travelled all over the country already.  Quite how I missed it previously, I have no idea, but I’ll enjoy reading the ongoing blog and might even explore some of my UFOs and see if there’s something I fancy finishing.

Of course, I’ll put it all straight back again after I’ve looked, though.

Celebrating a birthday

London was looking lovely in the Spring sunshine yesterday.  Edward joined us there to celebrate M-i-l Bettine’s 89th birthday with a gentle day including lunch, a matinee and supper.

Tempting though it was to dive into the National Gallery for a quick shufty, or to take a short look in one or two shops, with the exception of a short detour to buy turkish delight in Fortnum and Mason, we kept right on focus and kept an even pace on through Trafalgar Square towards the Strand.  Lunch was calling!

We first saw someone performing this trick in Frankfurt a couple of years ago (scroll to the bottom of this post to see the German version)  Clever, yes.

So clever that another chap was performing exactly the same illusion about six feet away as well.

And another!  A few steps further along the pavement was a third version.  Maybe it’s not quite so difficult or entertaining after all?

Believe it or not, there was a fourth “floating man”.  What had seemed to us to be such an original and eyecatching act when we first saw it became silly and rather pointless when performed by so many in such a limited space.  No-one really paid much attention to any of the four of them, as you can see.

We moved right along.

We’d not been to The Savoy before and couldn’t resist taking a picture of these glorious orchids, so beautifully arranged in the lobby.  Lunch was delicious and perfect for the Birthday Girl, who loves to eat fish of any kind.  It was great to be able to step outside and straight into the theatre afterwards too, because we had tickets for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, just next door.

We weren’t totally captivated by the show, but it fitted the bill and was a colourful and amusing diversion for the afternoon.  We hadn’t realised it had opened so recently and have enjoyed reading the reviews here and here, agreeing with most of what has been written about it.  The main thing was, Bettine enjoyed it.  That was all we hoped for.

Rather than drive straight home after the show, we enjoyed a stroll back through Leicester Square and Regent Street, dropping into our favourite Sartoria for drinks and a light supper with one last surprise – Tra came and joined us which rounded off a lovely day perfectly. 

There can be few better ways to spend the day than getting dressed up, going out on the town and coming home feeling “comfortably stuffed”.  I hope I’m still doing that when I’m 89!

We were warned

The advice this morning was to stay inside and not do anything too strenuous, so perhaps it was a little foolish to go outside and work in the garden? 

We didn’t think the smog had reached our part of the country when they were issuing the advice this morning, but as we sat drinking coffee and looking over the valley, it definitely looked as if something was in the air.  Maybe not Saharan sand but a thick layer of smoggy mist was hanging over us.

Mind you, there were other little airborne hazards for those prone to sneezing at this time of the year as well and though my hero didn’t consider himself to be amongst that group, this morning he admitted defeat and took refuge indoors when it got a little much.

Those heavy, smoggy skies don’t really provide the best backdrop for the lovely blossom which is opening right now.

So I was persuaded to look down, to the primroses which seem to have found every nook and cranny to bloom this year.

Whilst I was out there with my camera, I thought I’d have a little look at my favourite lichen. Here’s hoping it won’t be harmed by this horrible air we are experiencing right now. The view is that it will all be blown away tomorrow by winds coming in from the Atlantic.  Looks like we’re going to be sending it back to France, from where it came.

Bon Chance!

The Desert Breeze

I was working at Denman College near Oxford on Monday and returned to my car in the late afternoon to find it covered in dust.  I had no idea that we’d been in the middle of the Sahara Dust which has been blowing our way throughout the last couple of days.

The Met Office blog, where I found this image, explains it very well and puts the size of this “cloud” into perspective, too.  That is some cloud!

Actually, we have a little Saharan sand of our own, sitting on the cloakroom windowsill with a couple of other sandy samples from other places on our travels.

It was collected here, in the Libyan Sahara, when we were there in 2010.  I was tempted to telephone Chris Evan’s show this morning with my Top Tenuous story about the desert:  There we were, standing miles from nowhere and our guide Mohammed took off his shoes and socks and stood wriggling his toes in the sand for a while, before uttering the memorable words,

“Aaaah, Weston Super Mare!”

The Sahara is such a magical place and there is indeed a lot of sand – rather more than at Weston Super Mare, as anyone who knows that place will confirm. 

Mind you, I brought home a fair amount of the stuff in the shoes I wore that day.  They are not shoes I wear very often, but every time I do, I still get a little pile of sand on the floor when I take them off.  That means there’s probably a little Saharan sand on the floor of a few places in and around Machu Picchu as well.

The stuff gets everywhere!