Lazy Sunday (I hope)

Sunday. Julian and Dorothy's anniversary. I always remember them standing at the top of the stairs at Chelsea Registry Office on that sunny day, looking so sweet together with Madeleine throwing confetti over them. Chris and Victoria gave them such a lovely bunch of beautiful flowers, later recorded by Julian in a super little painting. This was given away to a mutual friend but here is a not very good snap of it - I was always very fond of it. We were all living together in those days with two cats and several goldfish.Julian made a little pond in the garden for the goldfish which required many hours of digging. It was certainly a full house.

I often get a bit tearful early in the mornings. This has been the case for many years and I have come to the conclusion that my hormonal or my blood sugar levels are probably low first thing in the morning, because this always improves after an hour or so.

Although I fed Malvolio at five pm last night, he was kind enough to let me sleep until 7am this morning, which is a bit of a bonus. It is freezing cold outside apparently, and not that warm inside, either. I am glad I brought the old fire upstairs as I will certainly need it this winter.

I am very keen to get painting but must keep drawing for a bit longer to try and improve my draughtsmanship. I am also nervous about painting, but tell myself I am only doing it for fun! so it doesn't matter if it is totally incompetent. After all, I have done the classes - degree, and so on, so now I can just enjoy it without having any other goal.

I am looking forward to ringing Nibby later. There has been a heat wave in Australia with lots of bush fires, which is a bit worrying, but I hope Kangaroo Valley hasn't been affected.

Here's a sodding bunch of flowers.

Sketchy Efforts

I shall have to stop communicating with my family - we always end up by arguing.

Did some more sketches today - still crap - but worked out I haven't done anything for about 12 years, so probably not surprising. Tried doing a few from the telly and some bits in the room, plus Malvolio's head (above).

Pitmen Painters was very good, but every time they changed scene which was frequently, they seemed to do the same thing as Hytner in the History Boys, i.e. bang around with stuff projected along the back of the stage and various light effects and explosions, which tended to put me off what was going on, but I suppose did keep me awake during the second half, though it got boring. It was worth seeing, though there was the usual dreary middle-class crowd, laughing loudly and knowingly at anything mildly amusing. I am really turning into a grumpy old woman.

Glory Land

I may have mentioned my new mini-obsession with Dock Boggs, an American folk singer I heard on a BBC4 programme recently. The tune that made me sit up and listen was 'glory land' which I now have on my Doc Boggs CD.

I was supposed to lunch with the SE1 lunch club and really looking forward to meeting them at the Royal Oak, but had a bit of a tummy upset so thought it wiser to abstain, particularly as I am going to the theatre tonight. So strange: after I saw 'Cage' my neighbour was due to see it, then when I told him I was seeing 'Pitmen Painters' tonight he told me he is seeing this too next Wednesday and was at uni with someone involved in it.

Keeping up the sketching. Don't know whether it is old age or blindness, but all the marks seem to be very crude and forceful. Will have to chill out a bit.

Surprise Lunch

As I am now poverty-stricken, Romy insists on paying for lunch. She found a good deal at Cantina Vinopolis, so we prepared to walk around the corner and take advantage of this. However, when booking on Toptable, she pressed the wrong button, and booked at the Cantina at Tower Bridge, so there was a quick taxi dash. The lunch was very good indeed, and we had spotted a rather good looking large boat on the river outside. Romy rang the number displayed on the side, so we shall probably book a trip from Tower Pier for the punters, including lunch or tea. There is a minimum three hour hire fee, so lunch may be the thing. A lucky find and quite an adventurous lunch, so we can still try the right Cantina at some stage.

My ex sent me quite a friendly and funny postcard (above), but I really can't put up with any more scenes and difficulties with the rest of the family, so I have drafted a letter and sent to the others for comments before I post it. I expect he will still turn up from time to time, but hopefully at considerably rarer intervals.

Vampire and Bottom Mouths

I was reading my Diana Athill. She writes amusingly about an older woman who would insist on wearing scarlet lipstick, which got all over her front teeth and spread to the deep furrows on the outside of her lips, giving her a look of a vampire torn away from it's prey mid-meal.

Nibby also made me laugh. She had been frantically whistling for a lost dog: 'I whistled for hours and it was so bad the lines around my mouth became really deep, so my mouth looked like a bottom'.

Touch wood my 'around the mouth' lines aren't too bad yet, but I do have to watch the lipstick a bit.

p.s. Nibby would never say 'anus'.

Moveable Children

Back again! don't know what happened there, but internet is now back.

My ex told me something I thought was very strange when he turned up on Sunday. It seems that when he was only one year old, his parents divorced and he was sent to live with his father and his new wife for two years. When the new wife got pregnant he was sent back to live with his mother and her new husband who had a daughter two years later. When this marriage broke up, he was left with his stepfather and sister until he was around 12 or 13, and his mother, who had remarried again, was now living in England having moved from their native South Africa, and eventually sent for him to live with her there. She then had four more children from her final marriage. I did know most of this, but was surprised that he was left as such a small baby with his father and later with his stepfather. A bit of a 'pass the parcel' existence. He told me that his mother had been very young, and suspects she may have become pregnant, necessitating the first marriage. He must have hardly known his mother until he was much older. I always felt he put her on a huge pedestal, and maybe this is why.

My own childhood was a mobile one: my father having left my mother, who remarried and had my sister. We lived all over the place, from Devon to Cambridge where my first stepfather was doing his degree after the war, to London, then a few years in Trinidad, West Indies where my stepfather worked in the oil business. Then that marriage split up, and my mother brought us back to England and remarried, living in London, Farnham in Surrey, and eventually on the Wirral peninsula, where my brother was born when I was 17. So we were rolling stones. But the one constant in my life was my mother and my sister, and much later, my brother, and despite all the moves, I always had my mother and family so I was very lucky.