The Man with the Green Beret *

A day of many arty activities. First up, I finally got round to viewing A Taste for Impressionism at the National Gallery. I’m sure I’d seen the paintings dozens of times as they’re largely just hoycked out their permanent collection, but the story of how they came into the gallery’s ownership was a bit interesting, and thought provoking. We no longer have that industrial and mercantile class in our cities (outside London) - the ones who built the fake baronial mansions all over the highlands, who owned fine wooden clyde-built racing boats and who snapped up French art for their drawing rooms. Well, if they’re still here, I never get an invite. 
Then a meet up with the elderly mariners at ‘spoons. Old Hellewell, now a sprightly 89, fairly whipped them in. Good nautical talk with IG - I need to expand my to-do list. And JA became a bit expansive as the drink sank in; I think that he’s not enjoying enforced idleness.  
Home and out again to meet up with R&E at the Traverse to see The Time Machine: A Radical Feminist Retelling. Well, danger, danger, right there. And done by young people. What do they know, after all? But strip all that away and there was much to enjoy and even learn. We were all that way once. Young and idealistic, I mean. Not girruls.


*Matisse