Strange Sunday

Tesco delivered my shopping on time, so I set off for Barnes from Waterloo. Managed to get on a 33 bus at Barnes and arrived at Strawberry Hill around 12.30. I then discovered that my group were in fact meeting there next week. Dear me. I sat and did a rather bad sketch of Strawberry Hill. It looked rather like a large decoratively iced wedding cake with new trees obscuring it in front. I sat in Walpole's shell seat and as I looked at the house a rather gothic gloom overtook me so did a rather desultory dark sketch. As I left I noticed my rubber on the seat, which seemed like a message from Walpole to erase the drawing. I then had some soup for lunch and wandered around the house which was quite pretty but really needed books, furniture etc to bring it to life. The main thing of interest to me was that Walpole's windows and wooden blinds were made to slide back into the walls so that the views were uninterrupted. Might have been intresting to open the windows and draw the view. Oh well. Went to Twickenham on the 33 and got the train to Waterloo. Noticed that the dreary Twickenham Co-op supermarket is now a Waitrose. Nils has been out all the time recently and starts work on Monday.