Drawing on the floor
A Christmas of very high and very low points. The low points are too boring to whinge on about and in this economic climate, we’re not unique.
However the high points were sharing Christmas Day with dear friends and family and woo-hoo, Tom has been offered a place at Oxford University! Provided he gets the grades, he’ll be off to Hertford College (alma mater of Evelyn Waugh and his creation Charles Ryder in ‘Brideshead Revisited’) in October.
Animals in love
This was a piece of art Xavier created after asking me some questions on the way to school. Double-click on it to get to the bigger one on flickr – I promise you it's worth it.
Last thing at night
I thought I’d captured him but when Xavier looked at it this morning he didn’t know who it was. I don’t know who he thinks this strange man is who’s reading in my bed.
Xavier close-up
I spent the day with my heart in my mouth worrying about Tom’s two interviews at his first choice university. Then I’ve just returned from picking him up from the next town in the dark and the wet on a fast road – which I hate, so I’m just going to enjoy a glass of wine to unwind the knot in my stomach and hear how it went.
X-factor weekend
Along with at least 11 million other people Xavier and I watched the X-factor this weekend (and I pretended to Xavier that I was phoning in to vote for our favourite, Olly Murrs). Robin, like countless husbands up and down the country, spent the weekend making disparaging remarks about talentless manufactured pop stars.
Puppet show in the church
The last evening of Xavier’s church story club this term culminated in a puppet show of the tale of Baboushka and the nativity. A pew was turned round to hide the puppeteers and puppets were made by the children from wooden spoons, pipe cleaners and scraps of cloth.
Meanwhile eldest son Tom is in the throes of university applications and interviews. He has an interview at Oxford coming up and has had them at Bath and Bristol. It would be very convenient for us if he got into Oxford – far less expensive on the petrol visiting two of them at once, however the other universities are in very lovely cities…
Weekend away
A lovely weekend visiting my dear friend Shulay. Her daughter Lilijan was in the school choir entertaining everyone at the church fair with Christmas songs.
Too busy to scan and post… but back to ‘the Big V’
I apologise to non St Albans readers for banging on about the Big V again, but this comment in the local paper’s website made me laugh
well_well_well, st albans says...
9:14pm Thu 3 Dec 09
The big V, indeed.
Personally I think that the sculpture is ... evocative of something else that begins with V.
Something ... anatomical, female.
Not sure whether I'm amused or horrified by the idea of having this on display in verulamium park ...
But I'm sure that the local subculture will soon assign a new name to the sculpture.
And, by extension, to the park ...
Not that I have any objection to erotic symbolism in sculpture, but as a valiant fighter for a proper process for commissioning public art, I’ll happily publicise any criticism of this silly proposal.
If you do have some spare money going and want to support the arts, I’d really recommend you look at investing in the proposed refurbishment of the historic St Albans Odeon Cinema
Newspaper articles about the project can be found here and here.
And if you double click on the image below you can download a bigger version of the form from my flickr page which should be returned to The Rex Cinema, Berkhamsted, Herts HP4 2FG.
