Bitten by a minimalist bug

I have just had a lovely few days away staying with some friends first in Bristol and then in Bath. An adventure made slightly more exciting given the fact I fly down to Bristol as it costs so much less then a rail ticket.. ridiculous really and a shame re the 'carbon footprint'' but its hard to justify 219 squids on a 5.5 hour train journey when its quicker and cheaper to fly ( less then 25%) - except of course I got delayed due to the European air traffic strike - but I had my sketch pad and a book to read so it wasn't too bad.

The friends I visited have both got lovely interesting houses and my very good chums I've known since we were at school together have just had the most amazing extension built. They are just going through the process of moving back into the living space and starting to colonise it, planning colours and schemes, it looks pretty fantastic now so I'm really looking forward to seeing it develop...

panoramic view of very splendid space with the dogs and their carers..

Trouble is .... I come back home and I'm oddly energised with a passion for minimalism, for white clean lines, for open spaces and massive windows.... I even quite fancy a dog!!! ( my friends are owned by two bonkers canine creatures) - its always the same for a few days until I get back to normality and realise its not really for me - I can absolutely appreciate it in other spaces and it would be an interesting experiment to see how long it would take me to totally over fill and over colour such a glorious clean space.... wish they would let me ha ha ...

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Scotland part 2

The second half of the week continued in much the same vein. We had one rainy afternoon which was actually quite nice to be holed up in the house with the rain lashing the windows. It probably wasn't quite so nice for the two visitors that came on their bikes but they're tough cookies - and its only water- but I did feel sorry for them having to cycle six miles back down the track in the wind and rain, but given Scotland, it wasn't as bad as it could be. The big quest for the 2nd half of the week was to find some deer antiers! The chap that owned the house dropped in to visit - he was a very friendly fella and was chatting about how this was the time of year when all the Stags lost their antlers (he collected them and sold them) so after that we were on the serious lookout. It's always been Fred's mission to find some dropped antlers.... The Monro baggers continued with the mission to bag the remaining three Monros... there is discussion as whet...

Vigo

We left the ship to explore Vigo. Its a much larger place then we expected... although tbh I hadn't given ut a lot of thought. Its a real mish mash of old and new and having got a map from tourist info we decided to follow the walking trail to the Monte Castro... the highest point of the town. Most of the town was pretty much as everywhere else... lots of traffic... lots of people... one or two interesting buildings and a lot of shopping. We headed to the art gallery - this has been a year of gallery visits so we we seen o reason to change now. The Museo de Marco is housed in the towns ex prison building and its very grand. In fact, I think that on this occaision the building might have been more interesting than the art.... Although the visiting exhibition by Susanne S D Themlitz was strangely compelling. It was a huge varied collection of eclectic items... found, salavaged, manipulated and arranged in lots of ways - weirdly inspiring - and mostly enjoyable to look at...

Funchal

So after three days at sea we finally hit Funchal in Madeira. An escape from the ship, and I have to say it was very pleasant indeed. First of all the weather is really splendid. Especially when you know that everybody else in the UK is suffering grim storms and vile winds.. Over here it is between 22 and 25 degrees is really quite warm. Funchal is a pretty city. It's built on a hill it with lots of lovely white houses with stunning red roofs. In order to get the best of it we walked along the sea front until we got to the cable car and we took it up the hill. It was a really good ride much longer than we imagined and it's quite weird because it goes right through the town - completely over everybody's house... So not only do you get a lovely vista of the bay but you can view the beautiful rooftops and get to look in everybody's gardens and to look at their picnic sets.. clean washing nice plants... scratty b...

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