Thursday, September 25, 2014


Sunday afternoon the four of us went to The Fiddler’s Elbow, a local pub.  The pub has live music every night and on Sunday afternoon they have Irish folk music.  The music was lively and a few of the local girls tried their hand at Irish Dancing.  I was able to get a short film of the best dancer.  Another local regular, Miriam came over to our table to tell us how much she likes “Yanks”.  She was quite a character.  She offered to put us up for free at her place because the “f**ing hotels screw everyone”.  She did ask us to excuse her French, and believe me, we had ample opportunity to excuse her.  She also had her hands all over me, rubbing my shoulders and back, she really does like Yanks.  There is going to be a Motown night next week and Sue asked if she would be at the pub for that.  She said no because she would be “too pissed” by that time of the evening to come to the pub.  Sue got a photo of me with Miriam.  Bob and I finished off the afternoon with a drink of Jameson Irish Whiskey.  It always tastes good after a few beers.

After that experience we tried to get Bob & Joan to a Sunday Roast.  It was about 17:00 when we started calling pubs to see which might still have some meals available.  We were out of luck.  It seems that here the Sunday Roast is an early afternoon meal, and not a Sunday evening meal.  We did end up at a pub, and we did eat, but it wasn’t a Sunday Roast.

Monday Bob & Joan were off to Ireland to visit daughter Kara’s in-laws.  We went with them to Heathrow and saw them off.  After a few days there they will return to Chicago.  We returned home and did some grocery shopping.

Tuesday morning we were off to Norwich to see another painting.  The museum is in a Castle.  This Castle used to be the jail.  We had another nice visit with another young curator.  The painting, “The Lord Mayor’s Reception” by Michael Andrews is a painting that is better seen in person.  The detail in the painting is just not noticeable in a photo.  It is a very large painting 7 ft x 7 ft, and there is something to see in every square inch.  We saw the painting in the storage area, and we had to view it in the aisle way.  It was very narrow, and when I moved to the side to look at a particular area I brushed up against the frame of another painting and I knocked off little doo dad!  I picked it up and set it back on the frame, the curator wasn’t concerned.  The frame was in pretty bad shape, but I made sure to stay away from it after that.

Today we had another great painting day.  First we went to the storage facility for the Tate Museums where we saw NINE paintings!  We were shown the paintings by a young male curator, Charlie.  It was a wonderful experience!  The storage facility is gigantic.  Charlie took us from room to room in the facility.  Each room is lined with large vertical drawers, maybe as many as 40 or 50 per room.  The drawers are about 10 ft high by 15 ft long with a center screen.  Paintings are hung on both sides of this screen.  Charlie would pull out the drawer that had one of our paintings.  Charlie was able to tell us a lot about the painting and the artist.  It may be hard to understand but we had a great time, and did I mention that we saw NINE paintings!

After coming home for some lunch we went out to the Wallace Collection.  It has four paintings on our list, we had seen three on prior visits.  The main gallery was just re-opened this week after a two year refurbishment.  We got to see the fourth painting, “Gambling Scene at an Inn” by David Teniers the Younger.  This is another great gallery/museum.  The collection is mainly from one man (I’ll spare you my retyping the Wikipedia page).  No object can ever leave the collection, even as a loan, and of course it’s free.  This brings our total seen to 490.  We are scheduled to see eight more paintings, and I've emailed Tate Stores to request another visit, because their request form only allowed us to list 10 paintings.  So there are six paintings we still need to see.  So we have a shot at seeing #500 before we leave the UK for Paris, Switzerland and Italy.
 

 






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