Self-Winding · A Sort of Progression

I won't be posting again until the 25th. I'm going to be here instead. Our neighbours have built a house near to this bay and have invited us to stay.

I wrote a long piece the other night about what we got up to at the week-end. Boy was it fascinating and beautifully constructed, pity I lost it. I posted when Blogger was down for maintenance. Never mind, the photos will do.

I will though mention some exhibitions just visited:

Compton Verney, Warwickshire is a wonderful new gallery and arts space which is worth putting on your list. Terrific food there, beautiful grounds too. The permanent collections are rich and the newly curated exhibitions of high quality. One is an exceptional and unnerving look at children's play investigating their depths of imagination and fantasy. Big name artists. Very dark stuff some of it - especially the Paula Rego-s and terrifying tableaux by The Brothers Quay. Magically, they had borrowed from Haworth several of those tiny handwritten books made by the Bronte children.

Another superb exhibition is at the Ashmolean, Oxford - we went especially to see it and it paid back in spades, if you will pardon the pun. A New Flowering: 1000 years of Botanical Art collects stunning plant drawings from all over the world. The work is selected for consummate skill; one fabulous piece, a clump of weeds in grass painted on a glass panel is so real that you might almost smell the dew on it. I find it riveting that a painter is able to work from the motive of botanical accuracy, yet also create something artistically valid and totally individual. It's a free exhibition at the UK's oldest museum, a place stuffed to the gills with diverse marvels.

Yesterday we fought our way through the crowds and heat at Tate Britain to see the Turner Whistler Monet show. Pictures so familiar that they have become part of my mental gallery suddenly faced me looking different in size and colour - the whole point of 'going to see'. The heart of the exhibition is historical London, its river, fogs and pollution; these caught the interest of the three artists leading them into the study of the diffuse lighting effects that they caused.
The big canvases were there - Monet's Sunset on the Seine, Whistler's blue Nocturnes and Turner's whorls of flame consuming the old Parliament. But the small watercolour sketches, the lithographs and etchings of river life that one rarely sees were perhaps the most rewarding - underlining the virtuoso qualities of the three. I wish I could have browsed them in peace.

Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
To see a fine lady upon a white horse;
With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes
She shall have music wherever she goes.
She had only recently been unveiled. Very beautiful she is too, a romantic and elegant interpretation of a pretty legend. We were just leaving after taking several photographs when we spotted this detail - a signature probably.

I'm off again. This time to visit one friend in Banbury, Oxfordshire and another in a village nearby - an all-women long weekend. We may go to Stratford for the day, and possibly visit Blenheim. I'm driving down early tomorrow morning. A good opportunity to use the new digital camera - G's present. Back Monday.


Odds and Ends

We saw a crossbill on the bird bath today - the very first one in the garden we think. He flew before I could get the glasses on him, a handsome bird with burnt orange plumage. I know that they are often seen in a field about a mile up the road - a place of pilgrimage for bird-watchers. There are now 13 various baby ducks filing up behind their mothers for crumbs and a paddle in the old meat-tin swimming pool. I am not only running a bird caff now but a creche as well. The mums doze under nearby shrubs while the little ones climb up the plank and dive in over and over again.

What is it about Scotland that breeds top quality bad poets? The great McGonagall is supreme in the field, but I came across this by the 'cheese poet' James McIntyre. Splendid stuff, sadly exported to Canada.

I had to queue to vote this evening, about twenty people waiting for their slips in the village hall. The poll clerk was simply covered in crumbs - mouth corners and all down her black skirt & sweater, obviously interrupted in mid danish-pastry to deal with a sudden flurry.

Speaking of which, we had lunch in McDonalds yesterday as a rare treat for G who likes the fries. He resisted the puddings, but later in the afternoon he suddenly said 'I wish I'd had one of those McFlunkeys'. A much nicer name, redolent of the silver spoon.



Are you on top of the news? In that case you will probably be a good Prognosticator.

I have been doing loads of everything other than blogging, mostly heavy gardening. We have been excavating a pond among other things; my 'garden-slave' (self-appointed) has been helping with his beloved tractor. All this simply lays me out cold in the evenings. I also tackled an Everest of of ironing.

One hindrance has been reading (rather late in the day, sorry) The Da Vinci Code which I crammed for four hours to reach the denouement. It isn't exactly Umberto Eco but it has compulsive content and insists on a continuum with short snappy chapters and odd twists of plot. As mind-teasing entertainment it was worth the Tesco knock-down price of £3.78.

It led me to check up on Opus Dei which organisation has hovered, like freemasonry, on the edge of my distaste without my ever digging into it. Concerning Brown's highly coloured tales of bleeding priests wearing spikes under their habits, and the church's cynical and sinister conspiratorial manipulation of historical dogma, Opus Dei's own response is of course a robust refutation. But what a compliment this is to the power of a novel that could put the Vatican on its back foot.

There's a plethora of journalism like this razor job and the coolly reasoned response. In the end I read the history, reflected on the new Pope, gauged the political nuances, the reports of a growing power base and at the end of it I am left with feelings that have become a lot stronger than distaste.