After our weird visit to Cobham Hall last Sunday M wrote to them suggesting some improvements to their tourist "offer" - instead of being offended they noticed the letters after his name and invited him to come in for a chat about how to spend their Heritage Lottery Fund grant... wow! So that was one strange and positive thing.
Wednesday was a good day. I finally swam and enjoyed it, and lay on the beach and read The Barber of Seville as part of my attempt to immerse myself briefly in Beaumarchais... then we had a small lunch at Miles' Bar...and sitting in the sun with a glass of wine is the holiday feeling in miniature so that was it.
Thursday was a less good day - the car not unexpectedly failed its MoT test - and needs £300ish worth of parts, and the washing machine also went into a coma...this precipitated another depressive crisis - weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth and on Friday impassioned emails to various chums to make appointments to use their washing machines... so things improved after that. I took washing to Anna's on Friday, on Saturday another load was done at Kirstie's while she fed me Pimm's, oatcakes, cheese and rhubarb chutney. This was at the end of an oddly exhausting day - we went around some of the open studios - one friend's, the others people I didn't know. It was fun and interesting, the houses all as interesting as the work almost. We eschewed certain houses - brightly coloured flummery doesn't interest me greatly.
One of the artists Brian Bushell paints death and decay - and waves. He uses a really limited palette and lots of impasto... very effective - there was a particularly striking crucifixion, which I'd love to have. He said that colour distracts people from the subject - makes them look in a more shallow way. I've been to his house before - it's a wonderful house, which I very much want, because it has a 100 foot garden that goes down to the abbey. Just the kind of garden they would love to build on.
Mike's pottery studio was amazing in quite a different way. He had shelves and shelves of stuff - we bought a vase for M's mother - and a butter dish stamped with elephants on it for ourselves and an irresistible green dish because I loved it - this did not represent a vast expense, I think these are the first "things" we've bought for ourselves for ages. I did buy a book recently - but that was for my talk - Beaumarchais' Figaro plays.
We had a long trek over to the "other side" - ie the Far EastCliff - which is getting the gentrification treatment too - the Farrow & Ballistas have arrived with their lichen and verdigris front doors and their acid etched glass. Very tasteful. (Just jealous). After the last studio I rather ran out of energy - went home and had a nap, and a bath and fell asleep in the bath... then up for laundry and Pimms, back home for a quick shout at everyone "Where is my phone charger? Who asked you to take it out of the socket I left it in? Does it not occur to you I may have left it there for a reason?" And out again, with another load of washing to supper with Anna's, gorged on lentil and mango salad and a couple of bottle of organic rose and the trusty ginger beer... came home at one, slept until 5 and then could not get back to sleep. So today was a rather low-key affair - but I did a bit of gardening and so on, otherwise there was resting, writing, editing and so on. Not unsatisfying,. Even doing a bit of editing on TRF makes me feel I'm not totally wasted my day. Am delighted that I have managed to prune back about 1300 superfluous words - writers are told to "show not tell" - in quite a lot of places I've done both... so it's good to cut. In case anyone wonders, these blog pieces are scandalously unedited, I type 'em, read 'em through and post 'em - no messing!
Wednesday was a good day. I finally swam and enjoyed it, and lay on the beach and read The Barber of Seville as part of my attempt to immerse myself briefly in Beaumarchais... then we had a small lunch at Miles' Bar...and sitting in the sun with a glass of wine is the holiday feeling in miniature so that was it.
Thursday was a less good day - the car not unexpectedly failed its MoT test - and needs £300ish worth of parts, and the washing machine also went into a coma...this precipitated another depressive crisis - weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth and on Friday impassioned emails to various chums to make appointments to use their washing machines... so things improved after that. I took washing to Anna's on Friday, on Saturday another load was done at Kirstie's while she fed me Pimm's, oatcakes, cheese and rhubarb chutney. This was at the end of an oddly exhausting day - we went around some of the open studios - one friend's, the others people I didn't know. It was fun and interesting, the houses all as interesting as the work almost. We eschewed certain houses - brightly coloured flummery doesn't interest me greatly.
One of the artists Brian Bushell paints death and decay - and waves. He uses a really limited palette and lots of impasto... very effective - there was a particularly striking crucifixion, which I'd love to have. He said that colour distracts people from the subject - makes them look in a more shallow way. I've been to his house before - it's a wonderful house, which I very much want, because it has a 100 foot garden that goes down to the abbey. Just the kind of garden they would love to build on.
Mike's pottery studio was amazing in quite a different way. He had shelves and shelves of stuff - we bought a vase for M's mother - and a butter dish stamped with elephants on it for ourselves and an irresistible green dish because I loved it - this did not represent a vast expense, I think these are the first "things" we've bought for ourselves for ages. I did buy a book recently - but that was for my talk - Beaumarchais' Figaro plays.
We had a long trek over to the "other side" - ie the Far EastCliff - which is getting the gentrification treatment too - the Farrow & Ballistas have arrived with their lichen and verdigris front doors and their acid etched glass. Very tasteful. (Just jealous). After the last studio I rather ran out of energy - went home and had a nap, and a bath and fell asleep in the bath... then up for laundry and Pimms, back home for a quick shout at everyone "Where is my phone charger? Who asked you to take it out of the socket I left it in? Does it not occur to you I may have left it there for a reason?" And out again, with another load of washing to supper with Anna's, gorged on lentil and mango salad and a couple of bottle of organic rose and the trusty ginger beer... came home at one, slept until 5 and then could not get back to sleep. So today was a rather low-key affair - but I did a bit of gardening and so on, otherwise there was resting, writing, editing and so on. Not unsatisfying,. Even doing a bit of editing on TRF makes me feel I'm not totally wasted my day. Am delighted that I have managed to prune back about 1300 superfluous words - writers are told to "show not tell" - in quite a lot of places I've done both... so it's good to cut. In case anyone wonders, these blog pieces are scandalously unedited, I type 'em, read 'em through and post 'em - no messing!
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