Exploring more of the Courtauld Gallery

Whilst we were at the gallery for the Monet and London exhibition we made the most of seeing other exhibits and the spaces that held them

The staircase is pretty spectacular, and was conceived as a symbolic ‘journey to enlightenment’ - with visitors progressing upwards through the building and moving from the dark to light to reach the top-floor landing. We hadn’t realised that and went straight to the top, I guess fast forwarding and possibly missing the enlightenment on offer. It’s a narrow space and the rooms on each floor have narrow ceilings, so the stairs do rise quite steeply on the final stretch.

VASE OF FLOWERS - CLAUDE MONET

As we know Monet painted so much more than the views of the Thames, and just outside the exhibition we stopped alongside this painting which he started in 1881, but signed and sold around 1920. Clearly a different subject and brighter, more floral colours but equally as impressive.

A BAR AT THE FOLIES-BERGERÈ - EDOUARD MANET

This was the painting that was the most recognisable to me from our visit - which I learnt is considered one of the iconic paintings of modern life, and was completed a year before he died in 1883. And while the barmaid is recognisable, I’d not seen the legs and green boots of a trapeze artist in the top left corner, which the blurb says ‘hint at the exciting musical and circus acts entertaining the audience’.

LILIES IN A JAR, 1914 - MATTHEW SMITH

The painting above by Matthew Smith was painting in 1914. Entitled Lilies in a Jar was one of my favourites from the whole day, and he was encouraged by Henri Matisse to ‘paint in a more intense and liberated way’ which makes this still life anything but still - and I’d happily have this one at home.

BALCONY VIEW, IPING CHURCH - 1943 - IVON HITCHENS

The painting above by Ivon Hitchens was painted at the height of the Second World War and after his London home was bombed during the Blitz in 1940. He moved to West Sussex where he painted this view looking towards the church from the balcony of a house. I think this is one you could easily have in your own home, and one that you could spend time looking at, and looking at some more.

ADAM AND EVE, 1326 - LUCAS CRANACH THE ELDER

Another image which may be familiar, and most certainly the subject matter is - but also one that I wouldn’t have been able to name the artist of.

We moved onto the ceramics section and here it was the lustred ceramics that caught my eye. The lustred ceramics would have been a must-have luxury item in the fashionable Renaissance homes, and it’s easy to see why. Lustre is made when a glazed and fired ceramic is painted with metal oxide pigments and fired again at a low temperature with restricted air supply, and results in a metallic film that shimmers in candlelight.

Outside in the December early evening we were now heading off to complete our other plans, but not without stopping and admiring this new-to-us rainbow snake of seating in a part of the Strand which is now pedestrianised, and which I’m sure on warmer days will be much used by both visitors and people working in the area alike.

We enjoyed our visit to the Courtauld Gallery, so if you’re in London and looking for something to do then definitely put this one on your list, and soak up some culture new and old while you’re there. There’s nearly always something going on at Somerset House too - when we visited the Festive ice rink was in full swing, but in the summer it’s also a great place to sit and people watch, it’s just one of those places that is constantly changing and is better for that.

I’m hoping that next time we’re in the area, it’s much warmer so I can try out at least one of the colourful seats!

Mostly gold interiors inspiration

Unbelievably it has taken me this long to get myself back to Margo & Plum, which I first visited back in 2022 when we were still checking out if this was somewhere we wanted to move to. In that time it looks as if they’ve made Bottesford their base, and added a cafe too. Yes, I don’t know why it took me so long either, but on a particularly cold and grey February day we headed the eleven miles for lunch, and a spot of interiors spotting of the more opulent kind.

I surprised MOH by falling for this monkey clutching a bottle of wine (sadly empty) - and he’s right it’s not my usual style, but I while I left it there for now, I can see this coming home with us at some point. I think it would look great in our hallway, which is also our wine store area, but we’ve a little more work to do planning out how we can use this area better, and we shouldn’t skip straight to the ‘making it fancy’ stage. We shouldn’t, which is a shame!

They had plenty of other ‘gold’ items that would go alongside these - and that’s part of the reason the monkey stayed on the shelf, as I think there might also be accompanying purchases when the time comes, just to make him feel at home of course.

Perhaps this pair of leopard candle holders?

Though I’d put these in our lounge, which incidentally is where my ornate green vase with exotic birds also lives. MOH bought the vase as a surprise birthday present a few years ago, and he did good. It was funny though as he remembered it, and how much I liked it, but couldn’t remember where we’d seen it and so spent hours internet searching - thing is, if he’d read my blog, he would have had his answer much more easily. Has he learned his lesson? Absolutely not!

Or perhaps a pineapple? Though I was torn between the gold metal and the green glass versions…

Or the bottle stop with extra bling? Though to be fair we don’t often have much use for a bottle stop, but I don’t see that as a reason not to have this bling-y one, as you never know when you’ll need one!

I didn’t leave completely empty handed though - the coasters under the bottle stop came home with us, along with some fake eucalyptus stems which I’m using in a vintage enamel jug along with fresh stems, to bulk them out a bit!

So not my usual style, but each of the things above would easily fit into our home alongside things we already have, and which we’ve bought to furnish our new home. MOH knows we’ll be back, it’s just a matter of when!

Lunch at the Margo & Plum cafe

Having the cafe is a real boon for the shop, and it was busy which is always a good sign - especially when it’s a little off the beaten track. It also provided an extended showroom space, showcasing how their items could be used, which is also clever.

But the star of the show was this fantastic jukebox.

Isn’t it great? And it was on ‘free play’ so even better - I think we’ll be back for this alone. Well, and the monkey and a slice of cake of course!

Twelve

Today I’ve been blogging for twelve years - and like last year I’m not sure where the time has gone, though I’m grateful to you for being here, and for being part of my online space and community.

Usually as part of my blog birthday tradition I indulge my other passion - and that’s for a list. This year though it’s taken me a fair while to work out what that list should be, and I guess as the number gets higher that’s always likely to be the case!

Looking back over the years and those three cupcakes to celebrate my third year was looking very promising, but even for me twelve cakes is a lot - so it needed to be something else…

Photo by Michael Skok Skok on Unsplash

Last year I looked at what had changed for me since I started blogging, this year I’m going to try to capture the differences between city and country life - and trust me, I don’t have a list of twelve as I start to write this post - so once again it could be interesting!

But here goes:

1. Mud. There’s a lot of it here, and obviously way more than in London. I’m not a huge fan of mud, especially walking - or slipping - across it, but walking boots definitely help, which leads onto…

2. The countryside is on our doorstep. Sometimes quite literally. But we can walk for less than 10 minutes in any direction and be surrounded by fields, that’s a big plus and vastly different from before where even if we drove for 10 minutes we wouldn’t have reached much countryside - though there are clearly pockets of green and wooded areas in and on the outskirts of London

3. Transport. We still live on a bus route, as we did in London - in fact there are three different routes which pass us here, rather than the two previously. It’s just they’re much less frequent, one route only runs four times a day and the other two twice an hour - but within minutes of each other both times, so if we’re using the bus it takes planning.

4. Greengrocers. Now this is an odd one, there are no greengrocer shops in Newark. Yes, there’s plenty of farm shops around, but the nearest actual greengrocers is either eight or eleven miles away, depending if you’re heading towards Bingham or Bottesford. There are generally more markets though, and the best veg I’ve found is from (what I call) the muddy veg stall in Newark, but they’re only there on a Friday and Saturday. Their veg though is fresh and has that feeling that it’s just been picked (most likely because it probably has) but often it’s still covered in mud.

5. Takeaways. Our takeaway consumption has dramatically lowered. We had fish and chips last week for Valentines, and before that our last takeaway was fish and chips in September. We’ve had a takeaway Chinese and Indian but I think they were probably before that. There are plenty of options in Newark and around, and we were clearly spoilt before just being able to walk around the corner to pick one up, having to get the car out and drive the four or so miles doesn’t happen that often.

6. Milk. This also takes more planning - I now buy two four pints of milk regularly, rather than just picking some up when we needed some. Our local farm shop only sells milk in glass bottles, which takes a level of planning which I just don’t have or aspire too. I also have an ‘emergency’ two pints of milk in the freezer, something that I wouldn’t even have considered whilst living around the corner from an M&S Simply Food.

7. Farmers & Tractors. Not unsurprisingly we see a lot more of these in our rural village, though I suspect if you’ve been in Westminster lately you’ll have seen a fair few more than usual too. Being a Londoner I don’t think I ever realised how much work farmers put in, but here we see just part of that first hand as they make multiple journeys a day past our house, almost always with a friendly wave for anyone they see as they do.

8. Washing vegetables. Yes I know you’re supposed to wash all the veg, even the ones that come in those sterile gas-filled bags from the supermarkets, but I rarely did as a rule. Now though, buying as much of our veg from farm shops and markets I routinely wash more of our veg, apart from MOH is called in to scrub some of the more muddier veg!

9. Eating out past 8:30pm. It’s not all bad, far from it, as there are plenty of fab places to eat but we have readjusted the times we book tables for. They’re mostly timed to coincide with the time the bus arrives, and are often much earlier than we would even consider booking for in London. We’re off to London this week and are heading out to dinner before our almost last train home - and we’ve booked that for 6pm too, so we have enough time to have a relaxed meal, and not have to dash to Kings Cross for the train.

10. Living in a 30mph zone. On the face of it this hasn’t changed, but in London there was so much traffic that it could rarely reach the speed limit, whereas here there’s so few traffic that it’s rare (but not completely unheard of) for traffic to bother to slow down to actually 30mph from the 60mph zones which buffer the village. Sometimes there’s an effort, sometimes a car does and a trail of four or so cars follow, but often some just don’t even bother.

11. Exterior house lights. Country people are obsessed with lighting up their houses, and I’m not sure why. We have lights on the front and back of ours, and they’re handy to have, but they don’t go on every night. Maybe I’m missing something?

12. People talk to you. Now this probably should have been higher up the list, and probably isn’t a surprise. In London people rarely talk to you, unless perhaps you might have passed each other on the street for say six months or a year, and never on public transport. Here though, that’s not the case. The first time we got the bus to Nottingham - it was a mini bus at the time, since upgraded to a single decker - it was like the whole bus was part of the conversation. And many of them had watched as our house was built, seeing progress as they whizzed past on their twice daily journey and were pleased to have met the new owners, reassuring us that the house had been well built. I’m getting more used to it, but occasionally do have to remind people that I’m from London and so not used to all this chat, and they often sympathise with me!

Actually the list came together more easily than I expected, though it was helped by a brief pause while I headed out to Zumba, which relates to another one that could have made the list - the number of village halls - but didn’t. I’ve been to many of the village halls local to me for various activities and classes, but I don’t think I ever went into a church hall back in Blackheath, or if I did not regularly.

So life is different, but not in a bad way at all.

Here’s to another year, I hope you’ll stay around.