Lightbox and teeth

There  you are - my full day neatly summed up in an incongruous juxtaposition. For the first time in weeks I was able to go to art class - Paddy was at home and I wasn't tied up with meetings. I walked down to her house with my tote bag full of paints, brushes, pencils, paper ... and found the other two pupils already hard at work. I love that two hours - the insanely polyglot chat because of Jean-Claude, the confusion for all sides of accents (French from the border with Spain, French from Stratford-atte- Bowe aka Scotland and South Africa, English from Scotland and Zimbabwe) and much goodwill. I was deep in recreating a scene from the Puglian city of Matera, and had got to the stage of transferring the original draft to a decent sheet of paper via the light box; we had to take it all into the kitchen to get away from the sun in the front room. I've decided small-scale detailed work is definitely my preferred activity, and I recall how as a small child I would take a wee notebook and a pencil if I had to accompany my mother to a child-free house and draw what I saw. Once I drew a very ornate sideboard, which I can remember quite clearly. I think I was six.

We talked so long at the end of the lesson that I'd begun to feel a bit wabbit again, so my friends gave me a lift home in the Jag, which was fun if hard to get out of: I've become used to higher cars. Much grunting ensued. I couldn't have a post-prandial nap, however; we had an appointment at the dentist, our first visit since the practice became private with the retirement of our much-loved dentist of many years. (You may have seen mention of Dunoon's dental plight in the papers or heard it on the news; there's now no new NHS patients being accepted in Dunoon or surroundings, and people are having to go as far as Glasgow to get their teeth fixed) We were there for ages because the booking system is still new to the people running it and they hadn't quite sorted out the efficient use of dentist and hygienist working in tandem. This meant there was only time for a quick walk round the West Bay before dinner. 

I've just watched the penultimate part of The Sixth Commandment - didn't feel up to it last night. What a brilliantly-acted piece of television; I almost couldn't bear to watch the opening episode with Timothy Spall, and when I realised it was a true story it was even harder. People can be extraordinary.