Where I've Been

OK, so this time it's been MORE than a month. I'm a bad, bad blogger.

But I spent three weeks of that time in England! By which I mean London, Devon, and Cornwall, mostly. Here's some of what I saw. (This will be a test as to whether I can figure out how to put more than one photo in a post without having them decide for themselves where they want to be.)

This is Rob (red sweater) and a couple from our little town who are temporarily living in London. We were in the theatre district trying to figure out how to head for Bloomsbury and a comparatively quiet pub. Rob and I spent five days in London, mostly looking at art except for seeing one play (a funny and sharp one by Jasmina Reza, "The God of Carnage," starring Ralph Fiennes.)

This is "Trafalgar Square, Shillady Departing." (Red sweater, back pack) He's not enthusiastic about cameras, so I took most of the trip in "Shillady Departing" mode. The building at left is the National Gallery, where we spent almost two full days, and the church straight ahead is St. Martin-in-the-Fields, where I went to Sunday services so I could hear church music in its intended setting.

From London we took a train to Brighton to pick up a car and drive across to Cornwall. We started in Brighton so we could go to Charleston Farmhouse, the highly decorated home of the painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. Vanessa Bell was Virginia Woolf's sister, and I was on an informal, barely conscious Virginia Woolf pilgrimage. (Stayed in Bloomsbury, then Sussex where they all had country houses, then St. Ives, Cornwall, where V&V spent childhood summers). But the Big Excitement the first day out of London was this bluebell wood.

Then we spent four or five days driving this...



on lots of roads just like this...



so we could spend a week luxuriating here...


among lots of these--some of which I'm sorry to say we ate.



I did all the driving. Rob is much whiter of head now than he was when we left, mostly because he was the one who was inches from hedgerows and stone walls when I pulled over hastily in the face of rapidly oncoming traffic. He kept muttering, "These people are nuts." I found driving on the left to be less of a problem than getting used to zipping around a hedgerowed corner with no idea of what might be in your path.

I only almost killed us once, though.

And now we're home.

And I'm going to be a much, much better blogger now.