The sublime and the ridiculous

A busy week, so far, including a trip at the weekend to see Chartwell, the home of Winston Churchill. Apparently, friends of the Churchill family bought the property from them and presented it to the National Trust, when the family could no longer afford to run it. Before WW2, Churchill had made his money from writing. But saving Britain from defeat, when Prime Minister in the war years, did not bring in the same income. I am glad he was able to stay in his home, because it is on a beautiful site, part of The Weald, in Kent, which he chose himself, before carrying out work to the house, and it must have been a place of refuge during difficult times. I'll post photos some time soon.

We had a very interesting day there, and sat out for lunch and tea, as the weather was good. The nice thing about Chartwell, as opposed to the local houses we have recently visited, was seeing the family’s own furnishings, and of course, Winston Churchill’s own paintings. I didn’t care for all the paintings; there was a great deal of dark green in them; perhaps they represented his ‘black dog’ moods, or perhaps he painted to get out of those moods.

On Monday a friend visited, and Irene came over on Tuesday. We were able to sit in the garden on both days. After she left, I progressed about 600 words on the novel, in a sudden burst of enthusiasm, ahead of the Guildford Writers’ meeting in the evening, though, in the end, I read out my first story, written in my twenties. Interestingly, viewpoint was all over the place. Whether I could do anything about it, and whether it’s worth the effort, I’m not sure.

Yesterday, on the train to London, to meet friend, Pam, I added a bit more to the novel and have just copied it to the computer. When I say ‘wrote’ I really do mean ‘wrote’, and I’m beginning to think that I get on better when I hand-write than when I start off on the computer. It’s so easy to get side-tracked and play another game of Freecell or Mah-Jong, or browse through messages from friends.

It was difficult to concentrate on the novel, because I was in the thick of a noisy group of school kids, on their way to the London Eye. The two girls closest to me seemed to the be worst and I felt like telling them to be quiet. They so obviously thought they were funny and clever and had to repeat their jokes three times over. ‘I’m not a lesbian,’ shouted one. My, how sophisticated. ‘He’s got a nice arse.’ Really? I just don’t want to know.

My friend and I spent the day at the National Portrait Gallery; we went specially to see the BP portrait exhibition which is always interesting. Brian Sewell is probably right to say there were too many photographic works, but still some paintings that we both enjoyed seeing. We also viewed the exhibit on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square – Ship in a bottle before making our way home – I can't seem to get the URL doing what it should do, but look it up:

http://www.london.gov.uk/fourthplinth/plinth/shonibare.jsp

Thank goodness there were no school parties then – just civilised rush hour travellers.