It is now July 2010, I have just returned from my first visit to Istanbul for 35 years, which proved interesting - they now have Starbucks. So much for coffee. It was very hot, something I should have anticipated, and much had changed, including the introduction of a handy, but hideously overcrowded, tram service which ran over the Galata Bridge - a new bridge as I discovered when I decided to eat there. The restaurants were not as I remembered. Now they are for tourists. Then they were for people. The dearest meal of the week. But the Hotel, the Agan, was nice, the restaurant across the way was decent - Turkish food has its limitations I reckon - and the room was cool. The most interesting change was the Sirkeci Station which has a new entrance hall and a posh looking restaurant called the Orient Express where the departure platform one used to use is. Remembering the chaos of the train and the customs and passport control set up one marvelled at the transformation. There are still trains to at least Bucharest so maybe I will suss that one out. Maybe not. Just how I coped with my luggage and my rucksacks all those years ago is now something of a mystery. I can still travel, but there is no escaping the fact that a 75 year old does not do what a 40 year old could.

Me in Chile - Copiapo and Dulwich pictures

Those pictures are not really identified, but it was our New Year's eve dinner - the lady is called Pam. The rest can remain anonymous. Unless someone who looks at this, if anybody ever does, wishes to know. It was scrambled eggs, smoked salmon and champagne followed by a hot chocolate gateau and preceeded by melon with port, the small round ones whose name I forget.

Photographs from which I intend to paint pictures

New Year 2009 in Westminster. The Old seeing out the Old seeing in the New

The old mill by the stream - I think I can paint this one. But it is really one of my better pictures.

The gentleman in red!

This is in France - I painted it, but somehow or other the view through the trees was far too explicit. I probably take better photographs it has to be said. But it is a lovely view. And I intend to try again.
So is this.
But not this and no guesses for where it happens to be. I did paint it, and this time not at all well, but I will have another go. It was, as you can see, a rather dreary day in the month of May. The sun does not always shine in Rio.

This is somewhere east of Bergerac - sunshine on the river. It lookeed lovely and the result has rather taken me by surprise.

Christmas Parties 11/08/2008

Had lunch in the Old Mitre off Ely Place today - seems to have an upstairs room where you can have a party. May be worth checking out. We need a place for the Critics' Circle to hold one, a place which doesn't cost too much to hire and where they have pub prices. But finding a nice pub is not easy. You would think London was full of them but it ain't. Trouble is the Circle lot are poor - or tight fisted. One or both. I suspect it is because people who get their entertainment for free don't go out much at the weekends in the West End and in the West End things cost a lot. Clubs do take non member events but tend to charge the earth for allowing groundlings into their hallowed halls - halls not always as swish as all that either. But the venue sounds good. This is what is wrong with living in a big city - you have to go for the centre and that puts up price and there is no word of mouth local reputation to aid you. That reputation means the place wants your business as your word of mouth will send other business. But not when you are in London's West End. Or not so that it counts.