IKEA Hell (continued)

Omitted to mention that I was so tired after the IKEA experience, that walking out of the store into the drizzling rain, I made the fatal mistake of deciding to go to Croydon on the tram instead of Wimbledon. This way, I reasoned, I would be able to get a bus direct from Croydon to my street. However. I was advised to alight at West Croydon bus station. First mistake. Should have got off at the stupidly named 'Centrale'. Could not find the only bus which goes to my house and after walking for ages going up and down subways with my heavy bag in the rain was almost in tears with exhaustion. Eventually found the right stop after about half an hour and fell gratefully in to take the long and convoluted journey home. I now discover that I should have gone to East Croydon, got a one stop train to London Bridge and got the bus or tube home. Oh well, such is bus pass life. Yesterday I purchased more sketch books, then had a fishy pedicure with Alice, followed by lunch at Mamuska. I spent ages trying to fix things to the back of my pictures and dug a huge hole in my thumb with a screwdriver, before resorting to tiny ring screws which were much easier to put in. Nibby said that galleries insisted on D rings, but WAC have not specified, they just want strings across the backs, so that is what they will get. Normally I would just put a lot of the drawings up unframed, with pins, which is the modern way, but to fit in with the gallery I am framing them. Because the frames are light and cheap I tend to regard them as temporary framing. To me, they look fine anyway, but if people want to reframe things they will have the work at a cheap price, so the price of reframing would not be an issue, hopefully. Often, when you spend a lot of time and money with framing, people reframe paintings to their own taste anyway. Nibby thought I could save money on highlights by dying my hair back to its normal colour. With this in mind I purchased some dye which was described as 'dark natural blonde'. Of course it turns out to be a rather drab slightly gingery brown, rather darker than my natural colour, and looks fairly vile to me. I may now have to have a couple of blonde streaks put in to liven it up a bit. We shall see.