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A Long Day’s Journey
6am, Bury St Edmund. All the taxis are already booked so we end up walking the 40 mins to the railway station. Mr Arcadia is especially brave as he is carrying the main backpack. It’s good that the sun is barely up as it’s quite hot today. 7am train via Cambridge. No time for coffee at Cambridge, just 10 mins to get from platform 5 to platform 1. 8.30, Train arrives at Kings Cross and we shoot upstairs to St Pancras to print out tickets & have breakfast. Security is slow, as the trains to Brussels, Lille & Paris are full. I’d heard that tourism was down after Nice,…
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Jacobean Art Orgy
I went past the Weiss Gallery in Piccadilly & they were having a retrospective on a Jacobean and Carolign artist. It’s on until 15 July, check out their website http://weissgallery.com Utterly gorgeous. It was clear in the paintings that up until the mid 1620s most of the lace is reticella with punto in aria dentelle edging. By the mid 1630s it’s full blown punto in aria and could even be the start of Italian tape lace. Certainly it’s the heavier style of lace. I had never noticed this before. The young gallery attendant did not turn a hair when I wandered in & was as pleasant to me as anyone else.…
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Look up in BSE
On Friday night I went with Jo, my kind hostess, to the Bury photography club evening out. Each of us drew a subject out of the hat. I drew ‘look up’. In the next 2 hours I took around 50 photos. (Don’t worry, I won’t post them all.) After we had a drink at The Fox with the I Love Bury St Edmunds group, led by James. I was given an I Love Bury St Edmunds pin, in recognition of my status as a one woman tourist bureau. Or because Jo purchased it for me. It’s an attractive pin and gets you 10% off at The Fox, which…
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Sheep, Stained Glass, Friends & Flowers
The sheep and lambs are about at Ickworth. These ladies were enjoying the shade & each other’s closeness. A bit fuzzy as I did not want to get so close I startled them. The mother sheep are looking a bit the worse for wear but the lambs are all pretty and plump. The sustainable flower meadow – which I have christened the ‘not-wild flower meadow’ had come on since my visit on Saturday. More poppies and more undergrowth so the overall colors have changed. The door in the walled garden is even more weathered than my last visit. There is something so beautiful about the peeling paint and the shades…
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A walk at West Stowe
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Frogs and Bees
These photos are by Josephine Sweetman. The frogs are emerging from the canal at Ickworth Park. Jo took the photos on Saturday. This is a bumble bee at the entrance to an underground nest. I would never have noticed but for Jo’s sharp eyes. A dozen entered and left the hole while we watched, entranced. The finger tip is included in the photo to give scale.
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A Concert at St Mary’s
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A walk at West Stowe
Walked in the woods with my hostess and her golden retriever, Alfie. A little muddy underfoot. All the rain makes for green, green woods. We stopped at the cafe at the West Stowe Anglo-Saxon Village on the way home. I visited the village in 2005 & 2009 but have yet to return. I report with pleasure that the cafe still serves excellent coffee & walnut sponge and coffee.
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Sheep, Stained Glass, Friends & Flowers
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A Concert at St Mary’s
This afternoon I attended a concert at St Mary’s church, Ickworth. Hexacordia early music ensemble were performing Music for a Golden Queen. The music was wonderful, interspersed with an outline of Queen Elizabeth I’s life that drew on poetry and letters of the time Hexacordia had a range of gorgeous Renaissance instruments and a lovely soloist. Listening to the concert while sitting in a medieval church and watching the light fall onto the mellow old stone and woodwork definitely added a frisson to the experience. And best of all I thought to take an inflatable cushion, so I was able to focus on the music and the ambience without being…
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Poppy Field
Seen from the car on the A11 yesterday. Anglia Limousines, ably represented by Sean, did their usual excellent job of getting me out of Friday afternoon Heathrow and into the country. Today we’ve alternated sunshine and thundery showers. Continuing the theme of red, I was able to purchase the Dior lipstick at our local Boots. It looks highly unlikely in the tube, but good on me. Score. Further set up included purchase of a new O2 sim pay-as-you-go, a new foldable water bottle as I left mine at home, and some Claratyne. Bury St Eds has a few new shops, a couple of old ones have closed and the town…
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I meet a Knitted Man
ArtDXB featured The Business Man sculpture “an interwoven portrayal of business ethics and the speculative nature of masculine form. It is constructed using a delicately woven lace, which is a paradoxical artistic approach that can be seen as a surreal interpretation of a masculine image representing power relations.” The piece is by artist Ozan Oganer, from Izmir in Turkey. Born in Turkey in 1973 he graduated from the Sculpture Department in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Dokuz eylül University in 2002. He specialises in statues made of lace and embroidery.
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From a Solo to a Duo
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Farewell Dubai
I’m at the Gate in Concourse B, with about 35 minutes till we start loading up. The trip across on the train from Concourse A was completely painless & easy, so I had time to stop in at a Dior concession and try a new lipstick. Which turns out perfect except they are low on stock. (Diorelle no. 023 if you were wondering.) I have not found a good new colour in my traditional MAC range, and the Diorific is a matte lipstick, which texture I prefer. So I look relatively glamorous right now. A security guard inspected my ticket in order to ask me if my scarf inspired my…
