Culture and that.

Yesterday morning Davies and I went to the library first thing as there is currently an art work display there in the space Davies will be displaying in soon that is very good so I wanted to show it to him, also he needed to get an idea of how much space there was to display in so he has enough art work to fill it. The artist has used various materials including pencils, felt tips, ink, watercolours, pastels, oil pastels on paper, card, canvas and most strikingly some coloured foam which he’d created 3d pictures of Disney Pixar heros like The Incredibles, Toy Story and Nemo and then added pencil shading to give them depth. There were portraits of famous people and some animals including a very good Christopher Eccelston and an alsation dog.

We talked a bit about what he might want to display now he had a better idea of the space available and then went along to the art shop nearby to look at their supplies. Davies decided he’d like to use watercolours to recreate his library through the ages series on some watercolour paper and use a pen to draw round the detail cartoon stylee, so we bought three huge sheets of watercolour card and a nice pen then came home. I cut up the card with our guillotine contraction and Davies got out his pictures and drew out the first two with pencil ready to start painting. He is going to need some chivvying along with the whole thing I think and some managing to ensure he keeps the quality up as he starts with good intentions and then degenerates into speedy work rather than consistently good. This is the first time that I think he’s actively wanted to do something that is going to require a level of ‘work’ or times when it’s about the ends rather than the process and of course if he struggles or decides he doesn’t want to do it then we don’t need to but I know he will be really proud to see his work displayed and when it comes to putting it up will be far happier knowing it is his best efforts – tricky one for the autonomous, not labelling things as work, you should enjoy whatever you’re doing combined with the pushy mum, wants him to be proud and do his best! 😉

Scarlett was being tricky for most of the morning so her and I fell out about her getting dressed but I think half an hour with Daddy restored her equilibrium a bit and she was happy again by the time we got back. The rest of the morning is a bit of a blur but at about 1pm ish we headed out armed with our food shopping list for the month. But food shopping is pretty tedious at the best of times so I suggested we pop over to the Booth Museum as we were going to Sainsburys in Hove anyway. I only heard about the Booth museum recently from a friend and couldn’t believe there was something so close to us with such displays. We managed to park right outside for just £1 for 2 hours. The museum is really quite remarkable with literally floor to (very high) ceiling displays of stuffed birds and animals all the way round. Mostly smallish boxes with backdrops suitable to the bird displayed, through the middle of the museum is a series of displays including fossils, butterflies and moths, eggs and shells and finally at the very back is a load of skeletons of various creatures displayed together in groups. There were birds, reptiles, monkeys and primates, a single human, fish and sea creatures and things like lions and tigers. Fascinating stuff. We still had a bit of time on our parking ticket so we had a quick walk round the park oppposite.

I’d picked up a leaflet for the Brighton and Hove museums and we realised Hove museum was very nearby so we drove there for a visit too. Having been to Worthing museum a couple of weeks ago I’m quite determined to visit all the nearby places like that and have a list of places to go to this year (which I must blog actually). I remember us doing the same just before we left Manchester and having a very intense month of so of trying to get round all the places we’d been saying we ‘really must visit’ while we lived there when we knew we were leaving soon. Hove museum was good, we particularly liked the toys through the ages bit and the history of Hove with lots of information about film making with zoetropes and other early animation techniques. They have a basket / weaving art work exhibition there at the moment which I confess I struggled with not reaching out and touching as we walked round, it all looked so tactile, so Ady and I seemed to spend the whole time hissing ‘don’t touch!’ at D and S until we reached the bit where they were allowed to touch and had a go at weaving paper, scoobies, wool and rope through various things. There was another tricky moment when we looked at a sculpture of a naked woman who had stabbed herself and was pouring with blood (very powerful images) and the information described the art as depicting a woman who had been raped and upon gaining the promise of her husband and father to bring the rapist to justice / avenge in other ways had stabbed herself as she couldn’t deal with the shame. Ady and I both fumbled around trying to explain a little bit without full graphic detail in the middle of a fairly quiet museum with lots of other families and children bustling about to two children who know about the mechanics of sex for baby making but are probably not quite ready for the leap to rape being explained to them just yet. Fortunately there are softly gliding out drawers under lots of the exhibits with yet more smaller exhibits in them and they got distracted by those while we were still agonising over how to phrase things. Phew.

So having detoured quite dramatically from our food shopping we finally got to Sainsburys and armed with a child and a trolley each set about gathering food for the month. There was small drama in the shape of finding a Weeping Angel toy in the Doctor Who figures which Davies has been wanting for a while and me initially refusing to buy it as there was no particular reason, we are only just after Christmas and Scarlett would then want something too. I changed my mind when we found watercolour tubes of paint on special offer at half price as she has been wanting some of them since Christmas when I bought Davies tubes and her blocks much to her dismay. So he ended up with his Weeping Angel and she got some watercolours and I bought them both a £1.99 tool box to keep all their various art materials in.

The food shopping always seems to take an age, as does the loading onto the conveyor belt and packing up at the other end of two full trolley loads of shopping, not to mention the loading it into the car and finally at the other end unloading the car and putting it all away. I bloody hate it! Fortunately it doesn’t seem to take much longer to unload and put away shopping for one month as shopping for one week, how we used to shop and it is nice to pour a glass of wine once it’s all done and sit down knowing the cupboards are full and I don’t need to do it again for another whole month! The various bits for the children coupled with me being on a mission to lower their white bread consumption meant we spent a bit more than usual and we still need to go to the butchers but I’m really trying to get into feeding the children better so the extra cost is very justified. They both only eat white sliced bread, I’ve tried making breadmaker bread, buying brown or wholemeal all to no success and as they often have toast in the morning, sandwiches at lunchtime and quite often toast or bread and butter to go with their dinner too we get through nearly a loaf a day and I know it is full of crap. So we bought a selection of pittas (they will eat wholemeal pitta), tortilla wraps and lots of crackers to have with cheese as lunch alternatives. They also gave me a list of dinners they would like too so we are now stocked up with things to make them for dinner too, deviating from their usual requests of tinned food for every meal! (oh yes, Jamie Oliver would have a field day! ;)).

We watched Primeval which I’d not really sat and watched before, thought it was quite good actually although the ‘creatures’ are not as seamlessly animated in as I would have expected from primetime Saturday night tv somehow. Can’t quite get my head around it being the girl from S Club 7 in it either 😆 although I did get used to it being Billie in Doctor Who.

D and S went to bed, we had dinner and watched ‘Thank God you’re here’ which I’ve really been enjoying although some of the guests are really quite weak in that format, that somehow adds to my enjoyment :lol:. Then I fell asleep on the sofa so went up to bed early (for me) so went up to bed. I still haven’t totally shaken the cold I had over Christmas and was thinking yesterday that I don’t feel 100%, a busy day totally knocks me out and I really struggle to get up the morning – several actions I could take with regard to that really, just need to summon up the enthusiasm for any of them, meanwhile Ady has gone down with yet another cold which I’m sort of hoping still having traces of this one left will mean I’m immune to – frankly I’m fed up with my body being a snot factory, there are so many more interesting things I’d like to be doing with it! 😉

This morning Ady and the children have had a game fest with Kerplunk, snakes and ladders and Going Crackers (W&G -totally mental and random!) and we’re about to head over to my parents for lunch.