Brideshead Revisited?

On the Circle Line between Kings Cross and Liverpool Street recently, I spotted a Lord Sebastian Flyte lookalike, complete with teddy bear and entourage - travelling back to the ancestral home or to a fancy dress barbecue?

Kitchen sink dramas 7

A flapping on the landing and a shower of paint flakes disturbed my packing for Wales. The Esher sculpture and the papier-mâché pigeon suspended in the stairwell were swinging wildly to and fro'. No sign of the cat. Had Buddy finally leapt in irritation at one of the artificial birds and plunged down two floors? No, there he was after all, in hot pursuit of a very live and very frightened pigeon that must have slipped in through one of the velux windows in the bedroom. I hastily shut the cat in the study and the pigeon in the kitchen-sitting room and opened the windows on both sides of the house, but the terrified bird flew repeatedly at speed against the glass, first on one side of the room, then on the other. After several violent crashes it was so stunned that I was able to pick it up and place it gently on the roof over the bay, where it remained all night. I thought it was beyond help and expected to recover a little corpse in the morning, but the story had a happy ending, as the pigeon flew away over the rooftops when I took a look outside to check on it.

Sausage dogs and sausage races

A sunny Sunday in May and we joined a social networking event for dachshunds on Hampstead Heath - sausage dog races, sausage eating competitions and a fancy dress parade - later followed by supper in the garden. Fonz showed a passing interest in one sausage, but didn't deign to race against the miniatures or wear his bumble bee costume and played obsessively with a new tennis ball through all the fun. Definitely not social, definitely not a networker.

http://www.dachshundsinlondon.co.uk/

Ought to be Bought 3

The third annual Ought to be Bought art auction at The Cass to raise funds for the final year BA Fine Art students' summer show catalogue took place this week. Lord Shoreditch, alter ego of designer and style guru Steve Edge, made a welcome return as auctioneer and many leading contemporary artists donated work, including Martin Creed, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Bob and Roberta Smith, Tracey Emin, Juan Bolivar, Dallas Seitz, Peter Lamb, Lee Maelzer, Jonathan McLeod and Ben Cain. It was a fun event as usual with a mix of students, dealers and would-be-collectors. I kept a low profile just people-watching when bidding started, but raised an unexpected bid at the very last moment to secure the piece I wanted. I am now the proud owner of a signed Tracey Emin monoprint, 'You said' - the artist's proof - bought with funds saved from my cancelled trip to Vietnam in 2009 and again this spring.














http://www.originalprints.com/printview.php?dx=3&page=1&id=24254&sid=9a9b2a94e7bf59fef8d65534ec2ce180

Kitchen sink dramas 6

The bird table is a regular stage for thrillers with cliffhanger endings - will they, won't they? This small, plump black female with yellow eyes is a new visitor to the garden and Buddy found her interesting but unthreatening in a nose-to-nose encounter yesterday, so we stashed the tranquillisers away. The ginger kitten and his black and white sister are often close observers of the on stage action too.