Monday 23 November 2009

My sister's visit

My sister Marian arrived last Thursday. I swept her off for a massage with the incredible Daphne at Flex gym in Uxbridge, then to Debenham's 20% off sale, where I treated her to a pair of jeans, a black hat and a pair of gloves.

On Friday we went to the Turner exhibition at Tate Britain which I thought was extremely well thought out and interesting. It was a thrill to stand face to face with pictures I had only seen on posters and in art books before and it opened my eyes to how Turner trained and developed as an artist. Just as you leave, there is a tiny portrait of Turner to the right of the door, showing him to be a squat and quite ugly individual, almost Toulouse Lautrec-ian in stature. That surprised me as I had long clung to a romantic mental picture of Turner as tall, slender, hollow-cheeked, pale and rather tubercular looking. How wrong I was!

On Saturday we took our bird-watching binoculars to Ruislip Lido and yesterday we went to the London Wetlands Centre at Barnes, where 'wet' was the operative word. Mr G went outdoors to have a roll-up and make a phone call and a sudden squall battered down on him and soaked him to the skin. How we laughed. (He didn't, of course, sitting at a table drinking tea with soggy trousers clinging to his shanks.)

Marian had intended to get the six o' clock train to Penrith this evening but, with the ghastly weather and Ullswater lapping an inch below the top of the doorstep, she wisely opted for the 1.30 instead. She should just be reaching Penrith now. I am missing her already. It was the first time she had spent any time with me down here and it was wonderful, though we'd have done more if the weather hadn't been so awful.


Flad was very nervous of Marian at first, but by yesterday evening they had made friends.

2 comments:

Jackie Sayle said...

Maybe Flad thought that grabbing him off the sofa in mistake for a fleece might be a family trait and so wanted to make quite sure that Marian knew he was a cat before getting too close to her.:-)

hydra said...

LOL x