Pictures at an Exhibition: in Trafalgar Square today

Today after work I dropped by the National Portrait Gallery to catch an exhibition in its last days. 

In Trafalgar Square, buzzing with the usual crowds of tourists, I was distracted by scenes of light on water

 This is home of course to the National Gallery ...

... but I love its little sister around the corner

 opposite St Martin in the Fields ...

This is an annual award for portraits by contemporary artists. This year's winner had more than the usual press for its controversial subject: Daphne Todd painted her mother in the three days after her death (not surprisingly, upsetting some members of her family). I'd expected to find it striking, but found myself rather unmoved and uncomfortably voyeur-like.

(photo credit: artknowledgenews.com)

I loved many others in this incredibly varied bunch of portraits, though. Shany van der Berg is a Stellenbosch artist whose work I've admired for years, and her entry to the exhibition was this raw and wonderful painting of her mother holding her great grand-daughter

(photo credit: shanyvdb.com)

Another of my favourites was Eliot Haigh's portrait of Quena - I would give absolutely anything to own this picture -

 (photo credit: daantidote.tumblr.com)


… and Michael Ozibiko’s huge canvas, titled iDeath, of a young woman wearing earphones, her head down, focusing on her iPod and her music, a distant non-emotional look on her face. The photographic quality of this oil painting is astounding. Interestingly, this is the portrait that was voted winner by a public vote.

(photo credit: london-insider.co.uk)

A chick flies the nest ... to the land of Rabbie Burns

It seems I blinked and she went from this little cutie patootie

to a young woman all grown up and kitting out her room at university!

Last weekend we travelled to the northern hinterland, accompanied by alarming amounts of baggage, to settle Daughter the Elder into her new life in Edinburgh

... city of friendly bagpipers

castles  and pageantry

Cars streamed in all weekend, loaded to the gills, spewing out freshers and their worldly goods at the halls of residence, joining long lines for registration, everywhere the nervous sense of departures and new beginnings.
Did we worry that we had too much stuff? Hell no, a brave few did this thang in style!

While Daughter ran the gamut of receptions and welcomes, we attended the Parents’ Tea (dear god, can I really be this old?) in the grand McEwan Hall ...

where friendly and charming graduate students told of all the fun our offspring would be having as we returned to our dull middle-aged lives ...

... until four years time when we meet up here again, hopefully, to see them graduate in this same hall...

In between the events we revisited some favourite places. Down the touristy Royal Mile, pubs beckoned ...

as did plenty of Scottish kitsch (ah, those endangered tigers of the highlands)

and St Giles Cathedral, the High Kirk rather, glowed in weak early autumn sunshine

... its founder John Knox probably still ranting from the grave against the 'ungodly' Catholics (will the Pope, visiting Edinburgh today as it happens, swing by and pay homage to an old enemy?)

From the gardens in Princes Street ...

the Royal Scot Grey on horseback (they fought in the Boer War in South Africa in 1899) fronts the view across to Parliament House and Old Town 

while Mary Stuart's Palace of Holyrood House hides a grisly past of murder and intrigue ...

 

(the ruined abbey at Holyrood)

(view from Holyrood Palace to Arthur's Seat)


Back for a spot of shopping for light relief, to the elegant George’s Street in ‘New Town’, where a statue seems to punctuate every intersection,  and a bagpiper every doorway ...

and lunch in Grassmarket where students enjoyed a last bit of sunshine under the castle on the hill ...

Scotland, you have my wee chick and therefore my heart. I hope to see you both often.

Partying in rural Dorset

Last weekend we packed a party frock and penguin suit in the back of the car and braved the Friday afternoon exodus from London, heading south in dense traffic ...

past this collection of funny rocks ...

(This photo illustrates, incidentally, how shooting through the car window in grindingly slow traffic can actually give you the same experience you’d have had by driving to the site, paying a fee and trudging around, dodging sheepshit. 

I recommend the former method for visiting Stonehenge).

Our destination, on this last weekend of fine weather for the year?
The rolling hills of Dorset ...

(the view from our friends' farm house)

This is the old Kingdom of Wessex, home of Saxon kings from 519 to 1066, and later Thomas Hardy country.

First a pit-stop in Shaftesbury ...

... for cream-tea at the uber-trendy Grosvenor Hotel
(what would King Alfred have made of this?)

Then on to find the tiny village of Semley where we would overnight in a room above the pub, the Benett Arms ...

Across the green, the village church ...

a couple of quaintly English cottages ...

and a handy signpost …

And you thought the English could spell! Are you ‘avin’ a larf wif me?...

Care of a friendly local taxi driver with a rolling Dorset burr, we headed to our friends’ farm where eighty people were gathering from near and far for a 21st birthday celebration.

White tents and lanterns ...

 in the magical setting of a lake at sunset ...

A crazy funfair ride ...

... and the party's on!