An eclectic collection of headings, if ever was one! So, in order: Sunday's party was great. Lovely people, fantastic food and drink plus we got chatting to a couple we only met fleetingly once before some years back, but now on closer acqaintence, found absolutely delightful. Andrea and Eric are now invited to come and stay with us in the village, I hope they will take us up on it.
Now you might be curious what Cezanne has to do with this week and the explanation goes as follows: about a couple of months ago while Pete was with us we went to a really brilliant Cezanne exhibition which had paintings from all over the world. Like the Van Gogh one 6 years ago, this one was superb as well. The choice of paintings is so much wider when you have access to the collections of a large number of museums, galleries and private collections. I bought the catalogue and meant to scan a few of the exhibits, but only this week did I get round to it. So, the story of the last 5 days not being particularly photogenic, you are getting Cezanne illustrations instead. The first one is a section from
Apples and Oranges c. 1899 from the Musee d'Orsay in Paris.
This one is
Self-portrait in Hat 1879-80 from the Kunstmuseum in Bern, Switzerland. Now for the rest of our week. Roy has got gout again. By Sunday evening his foot was hurting and overnight he got very little sleep. The culprit (again!!) is lamb. You may recall the lovely lunch on Saturday, well he ate a fair size portion of lamb and it gave him gout. Interestingly, the doctors always warn you to eat no red meat, but beef is generally OK with him. Alex thought that lamb being more gamey than beef might be the reason. I dragged him to the doctor, he is on pills for a week and it was suggested that he has tests to check his uric acid levels in future. Well, those of you who know Roy in this respect would understand that it is not one of the easiest things to get him to face a needle too often, so we will just stay off the lamb and hope for the best.
Mont Sainte-Victoire with Large Pine 1886-87 from The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. Both Monday and Tuesday had a visit in them to the baths, and this time I managed to catch up with my long lost chatting partners in the red corner. Wednesday we had a prearranged visit to the City Archives and Roy braving the below zero temperatures in a pair of sandals (only footware that was loose enough for his gout) off we went. It was absolutely fascinating. The computer system is totally erratic and occasionally seriously infuriating, but once you get into it, it can offer up some amazing things. The star find of the day was a facsimile of the will written by one of my ancestors on my father's side. One of Roy's internet friends in the States, whom he found through family history research, descends from this line, so we hope to send her a copy when we can get one in the New Year. The appointment was to have sight of the divorce papers of my grandmother on my mother's side, which also proved fascinating. This was back in 1909/10 and the apparent cause of it was my grandmother abandoning her husband. Well, family stories would have it that he was an abusive drunkard, no wonder Grandmother left him. We now have some copies of this document, which is quite interesting. Once an extremely helpful young man showed us how to get into the web site we got a bit better and now use it at home as well. It is quite unpredictable, but occasionally you can find interesting material on it.
The Abduction 1867 from The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Today we are staying indoors as it is perishing outside again. I will have to finish (if possible) the cut and paste instruction booklet for my new phone that I am culling from the 3 volume, repetitive affair that is available on the Internet, then print it as well as save it on Dropbox, just to be on the safe side. Then pack, so that when I go to the baths tomorrow everything should be ready for then Roy to go, get the car, pack it up and fetch me so that we can go home straight from the baths. That is the plan, let's hope no snow storm or other natural disaster gets in the way.
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