Bath

Ye gods! It was bloody horrible out there today. Moonface and I spent most of the day in Bath, primarily to see an exhibition of Paula Rega prints. I'm not sure whether I enjoyed it, but the experience was worthwhile. Her art makes me feel rather grubby, unwashed, unclean. The prints were of her intepretations of nursery rhymes, but mostly with an unpleasant twist. There seem to be so many currents of a sordid and perverse sexuality in the drawings. These were the ones with supposedly family themes; next week the gallery will show another batch of her prints.

As the attendant said: if you think these are weird, wait for the next lot. There's a whole series called "The Abortion".

I'm not sure whether we will go to the next series.

There was also a small exhibition of some pictures of Bath by Sickert, who lived here between the wars. They were pretty unremarkable sub-impressionist urban landscapes. Of course, he was supposed to have been Jack the Ripper by some people.

After that we wandered the streets admiring parts of the city that even Moonface hadn't been to, had a decent Nepali meal and bought Moonface's birthday present, then shuffled off to the station for the train home, hunched and shivering against the cutting wind.