Wicked for Good

I have had a great few days despite the wet and windy weather. I had dinner with Heather Br on Thursday and we had a good chat which sparked for me a great deal of reflection. On Friday morning I went to my Art class at the PPWH and it was an absolute joy, and afterwards I met Philippa for lunch in the café there. As usual it was lovely to catch up with her, and Ruth joined us for coffee. The two girls had never met before but were soon chatting like old friends, we had a good laugh. In the evening I went to Mekong in East Kilbride for a very early EK Book Club festive meal. We couldn’t get a date in December that suited everyone and we didn’t want to wait until January. It really did feel quite festive and we had an interesting and very pleasant chat, again I came away feeling very thoughtful (in a good way!) I have also been working on a drawing of a zebra at home, from a photo I took on Safari in August. It’s going to take a while, it’s very intricate. This afternoon Chanel and I went to see the second part of Wicked; “Wicked for Good” which was very entertaining although I still don’t understand why they had to stretch one perfectly good musical into two films. Then we picked up Davie (we were at Showcase Cinemas which is only five minutes drive from their house) and collected a curry and arrived home for a really delightful evening of curry and chat. 

Flu jags on a dreich day

Having got the hang of submitting work to the university online, this morning I read over my northern Renaissance essay one more time and submitted it, this time there were no problems in uploading it. And that’s it! My visual assessment and essay are both finished, the essay is a whole week early. I really did feel a sense of achievement, even if it is just for my own personal satisfaction. Actually, it’s more than that; doing the assessment has made me think much more deeply about the artists of the northern Renaissance and I have done a lot of reading about them with the result that I think I have learned more. Anyway, it has been a great experience. After lunch James and I went into Buchanan Galleries to get our flu jags. Neither of us qualify on grounds of health or age yet, so we decided just to pay for them in case we catch a bad case of the flu. It was a really dreich day. We did a very small amount of Christmas shopping, but neither of us were really in the mood, so we strolled along to merchant city to scope out some venues for our Anderson and Black pre-Christmas drinks, and found a promising lead. Back at home, we started the new series of the Witcher, with Chris Hemsworth replacing Henry Cavill in the role. In his Witcher garb with long hair, Hemsworth looked almost indistinguishable from the original Witcher, which worked quite well. It’s a good series but still much more James’ taste than mine. 

Visual Assessment

Today was my last Northern Renaissance class, and also the visual assessment went online. I was a bit nervous but mainly excited. I asked Sybren how long we were expected to spend on it within the allocated twenty-four hours, and he explained that two or three hours should suffice; it’s the modern equivalent of the old exams that I sat in great big exam halls in the 1980s. I think that in a way I would have preferred to have an allocated three hour exam, because I ended up working on it for about six hours. You are allowed to look up books and resources, which in my mind made the task more onerous! We were given three pairs of art works to compare in the context of the Northern Renaissance. Finally I was ready to submit the assessment onto the University website, but it wouldn’t upload. I wonder if perhaps the system was down because when I tried for about the 20th time, by now after midnight, it suddenly uploaded which was very exciting! 

Studying and Socialising

On Tuesday I went to my second last Northern Renaissance class. We were learning about woodcarvings, and one of the most impressive ones is Veit Stoss’s huge altarpiece in St Mary’s Church in Krakow. We didn’t see it on our first visit to Krakow in 2023, although we did see lots of other things; however we will be returning to Krakow in December to meet up with Gosia and Mitchell so I am very excited about visiting it then. We had chilli con carne with Ally (and without carne for me) and watched one more episode of University Challenge which of course Ally won again. He set off to a meeting in Edinburgh on Wednesday morning and thence to London by train, it has been really nice to see him. 

On Wednesday we had lunch with Christine and Gerry at the Wishing Well tearoom in Eaglesham. We had lots of news to catch up on and the lunch was very good. On Thursday we went to see 80s pop singer Howard Jones with Marjory and Forrest, after a tasty dinner at Il Pieno in Hope Street. Howard Jones was James’ idea; I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, and the whole audience were up dancing by the end. I think it’s fair to say that nobody enjoyed it more than Howard Jones himself, who changed sparkly outfits three times and was very enthusiastic. More very pleasant social occasions followed; coffee with my lovely cousins Janie and Julie, and a great curry at Rasoi with Heather and Ewan. James and I went to see the new film Nuremberg with Davie, it was very good. It didn’t in any way seek to excuse the actions of the Nazis but it was nuanced and Russell Crowe was fantastic as Goring. However I have spent a great deal of time over the past week working on my Northern Renaissance Art essay. James has rightly pointed out that when I was an undergraduate I was producing essays of this length (about 2000 words) every week, but I’m out of practice and also I want to make a good job of it. I’m enjoying the process very much. 

Home again and Afternoon Tea

Jennifer very kindly drove me to Milton Keynes on Sunday morning, from where I could catch a direct train to Glasgow. I had a reserved seat again and soon made myself comfy with a cup of coffee and a pain au raisin from Prêt. The train was quite busy at first but I pressed on with my Northern Renaissance essay and by Penrith lots of people had got off the train so it was lovely and quiet. 
James, Ally and Davie have been hill-walking this weekend around Glencoe and stayed for one overnight in the Nevis Range Base Camp hotel. James had piled up lots of food in the cats’ bowls before he left yesterday morning. When I arrived home in the afternoon Tom and Flora came running down the stairs and took me straight to their bowls. There was loads of dry food left but no fresh chunks, which I remedied immediately. James and Ally arrived home by teatime and we had a curry together and I heard about their hill-walking adventures.
On Monday morning the sky was a gorgeous blue colour but it was very cold and there was frost on the ground as I walked down to the station. I met Heather at Mackintosh at the Willow where we had a delicious afternoon tea; sandwiches, scones and tiny cakes. You could choose whatever tea you wanted and I chose Duchess Grey which was very drinkable, I drank two teapots full! Heather chose different fruit teas which she said were excellent. A good old chat ensued before we headed on our separate ways home. We made lamb tagine for James and Ally, and butternut squash tagine for me, and we watched University Challenge which was great fun. James doesn’t like University Challenge so my only chance to watch it is with Ally. I was delighted that one of the answers to a question about art was Vasari! I have learned about him in my Northern Renaissance art course! Ally won of course, although we were both a bit out of practice.  

Injera and candlelight in Oxford

Russell impressed me in the morning with his tiny frying pan which is exactly the right size for one fried egg to be fried in a perfect circle. After breakfast Jennifer and I, and her lovely friend Debbie went for a stroll into the centre of Princes Risborough where we went to a craft fair at St Mary’s Church Hall, and then had coffee and brownies. We were joined by anther of Jenn’s friend, also called Debbie, and had a really nice chat. Back at the house Jennifer organised a tile painting session for us, what fun! She then baked the tiles in the oven to set the ink. 

Our next destination was Oxford, but unfortunately there had been an incident on the line near Ruislip and all of the trains were cancelled. We met two young Oxford students called Ellen and Yelena who were also stuck, and after being unable to hire an Uber (because demand was outweighing supply because of the cancelled trains) Russ very kindly brought the car to the station so that Jenn could drop him back at home and then she drove us and the students to Oxford Park and Ride. From there we caught the bus into the centre of Oxford, the girls were very grateful and even invited us for drinks at Brasenose College bar! 

Jenn and I had dinner at Lula’s which is an Ethiopian Restaurant, and we shared a vegetarian injera dish; injera are fermented pancakes with the most amazing texture and taste. Then we had a coffee in Oxford’s Covered Market and listened to a great wee band. As we were walking to the Holywell Music Room for our next event I caught the side of my foot on a kerb and fell down full length rather painfully but luckily with only a couple of bumps and grazes. When Jennifer helped me up I felt really dizzy for a few minutes and my ears were ringing. Jennifer took me into a café and bought me a hot chocolate; I soon felt better and we went to see Candlelight ABBA versus Queen. What a fantastic concert in a stunning venue. We were in the front row and a string quartet played a series of tunes by both groups which were all excellent. At the end we had to decide whether Abba or Queen were better. Abba received rousing cheers from the audience but the applause for Queen easily and in my opinion justifiably surpassed them, so the final song played was by Queen. Does that mean that Queen wrote better songs or that the string quartet simply played the Queen songs better? This gave Jennifer and I plenty to discuss on the journey home. It was a fantastic day. 

National Gallery and Aylesbury Theatre

It was rainy today but I cared not a jot because I had already planned a morning at the National Gallery before meeting Jennifer for lunch. I set off after carefully posting Ally and Cat’s keys through their door after locking up, wrapped in a sock so as not to damage the floor. I had such a lovely time at the National Gallery and had a wee pain au chocolat in the Supporters House mid morning I met Jennifer in the Sainsbury’s Wing and we went down to the Supporters House where we had pumpkin tortelloni which was yummy. I mistakenly asked for tortellini and the waitress politely pointed out my mistake, so I looked it up later and the main differences are size and filling: tortellini are smaller and traditionally filled with meat, while tortelloni are larger and typically filled with cheese and vegetables. Always something new to learn! Jennifer and I then took the underground to Marylebone and caught a train to Princes Risborough. It was dark when we arrived and Russell kindly picked us up from the station, and we had a tasty tea of homemade soup, bread and cheese before going to see the German comedian Henning Behn at the beautiful Aylesbury Theatre. He was very funny; his main theme was what to do about global warming and he made some sharp observations and was not afraid to be quite 
outrageous!