The magic of art

29 March

Half past midnight last night and I decided that enough was enough and put down Dan Brown’s Inferno. I said to Jan, ‘I hate reading books!’ Here reply was, ‘No you don’t, you hate having to put them down to go to sleep.’ She is right you know; how many of us don’t like stopping when the story line has grabbed you and is dragging up deeper in to it? Most of I would suggest. Anyway …

As I put the book down it accorded to me that there was a way to move on with Bristol Fashion. The idea was that the two baddies would come together but I just couldn’t see how to do it. Last night I did see a way of doing it. So out came the bedside notebook and it took me around ten minutes to work it out. Later today I shall type it up too and see if I can move on from there.

I wasn’t going to mention the twice a year stupidity of changing all the clocks … until I notice that my ‘puter time hadn’t done the normal day light saving thingy. So I had to do it manually. At that point I noticed that for some reason the box for doing it automatically wasn’t ticked; it is now! As if we had enough to do with all silliness of it all. I really don’t see the need to do anymore you know. Originally it was done to help farmers at harvest time when most of the work was done manually. These days it’s nearly all done by a machine and just one person, so really there is no need for it is there. One benefit to it I suppose is that birders can stay out later, but it does make the day longer and some of us, like me and Jan really feel tired after a days’ birding in the summer months.

Something else that occurred to me last night, is just how many fictional detectives get sent abroad as part of the story line. Morse went to Italy and Australia; Alan Banks travels to Holland to meet up with Dirty Dick, a Special Branch guy; Roy Grace goes to Germany and Rumania during one book. And don’t forget Sherlock went abroad in one case. Strangely, Miss Marple didn’t but her Belgian guy did on several occasions. Which reminds me …

Robert Langdon has been again ‘abducted’ by the good guys again in his latest adventure and ends up in a hospital in Florence. What the story has done so far for me at least is to awaken the love of art that picked up during my time with the OU. Now I’m itching to go there myself and see the original art works I’ve only seen in print versions. It has also made me want to read Dante’s Devine Comedy. At some time I shall do it all of course, but they have to wait for their own round toit turns up.

Paintings have a magic all of their own, especially if they are by a master and even more so if they are outside his normal usual style. So for today’s photo I offer … 

Olga by Picasso. This one was copied out of a book called The Essential Picasso that I once had on my book shelves.

And today’s funny …

Why does moisture destroy leather? When it’s raining, cows don’t go up to the farmhouse yelling, “Let us in! We’re all wearing leather! We’re going to ruin the whole outfit here!”