Recalibrating

I've been in the USA for almost a week and I can detect the ways in which my tastes are changing.
In food, the pervading sweetness and large portion sizes (compared with European standards) are becoming normalised.

In a pub last night I found myself looking at women whose comfort-sized waists and arses would exclude themselves totally from consideration back home. It's just that large has become normalised. Even the Metro exit gates seem larger than those in London.

:-o

Surreal

I'm feeling glad to be ordinary.

Yesterday was a relaxed pleasant day which seemed to be just the right mix of activity & idleness.
We'd woken early and started to get on with things: Moonface gardening & me preparing some food for the evening. Together we heaved a hundredweight of sodden vegetation from the pond so that it could revert from being a swamp to a proper water-feature again.

As the weather was fine but the ground soaked and slippy from the previous days' rain we walked over Cotham to the Bristol Gallery to see an exhibition of prints, mainly Miro & Salvador Dali. I didn't think much of them as what was on offer seemed like pot-boiler work, the equivalent of a novelist's journalism. The Miros especially seemed as if the series of similar prints were dashed off in a short time to trade on the artist's name rather than having a considered artistic output in them. Both they and the Dalis looked pretty cursory to me.

On the other hand there was a small number of paintings at the rear of the gallery which did attract me. There were surrealist works by Dirk Larsen and Kevin O'Keefe (not Georgia) which were very appealing. The Larsen's combined "traditional" representational surrealism in oils with loose flaps of canvas obscuring the work below, each painting needing a good time to study.
O'Keefe paints big bright bold cartoons, intensely painted with flat colours. I didn't understand any of his work, but I'd like some.

And then we had lunch by the waterside before walking slowly home and whiling the late afternoon away in the sun or shade as we felt fit. I watched the Red Arrows' aerobatics from the roof, ate well, slept adequately while wondering if our house-guests were actually going to catch the right coach in the morning.

:0)

Little B

Treading upon bees with ones bare feet is not a good idea. Bee-stings hurt, and my whole foot is now tingling painfully.

Ow.

:o(

Threee Months

It's been three months since I wrote anything here.
Why the hiatus?
I guess that times have changed and I have other distractions in my life. I've not been enjoying my job as much as before although that is about to change again and I write in other places, too.

Facebook is an alternative to the blog, and I correspond with friends via instant messaging and Skype.

It's not been an empty three months, though. The van has arrived and been used, we've had a great early summer, I've been to Scotland and Wales and done lots. Life is alright.

[I regret not making more postings, so I may put some pre-dated jottings in. Let's see how it goes]

:o)