h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I remember walking around the top of the walls of Chester. Lovely city!
For some reason I had got it into my head that you were abroad somewhere. You must have thought I was potty,telling you about English weather etc!

I'm pretty discerning about abstract art nowadays, meaning that I like what I like and don't pretend to like it all! I guess if I have a favourite 'school' it is the French impressionists and Renoir in particular.

I think that whatever the 'genre', a painting has to connect strongly with me, or should that be the other way around? There is much mediocre art and 'commercial' work produced to sell to a popular market. Every now and then I see an artist who I can really relate to, as with Shraddha Bhagalia.

And now, it's that time again! Off to bed I go.
Goodnight LilSee you soon.

You are not potty at all.. I like it when you describe where you live. Don't you ever stop doing that


I like most schools of art. Watercolours are so delicate


I will let you go to bed, hunny.. Sleep tight


lil x

I'm right with you on water colours Lil. One of the studios in Lyme had some rather nice ones.

There's a fascinating gallery/studio in the main street that's up a narrow stairway between two small shops in an old building. All the way up the stairs the walls are festooned with paintings of great variety and by numerous artists. Some are fun, some not so good and a few are quite fine. At the top the stairs open out onto a short, narrow corridor, also lined with paintings and at each end leading into a studio.

One is clearly the workplace of the 'resident' artist: an accomplished woman in her middle years. Her work is quite 'strong' in that it is quite bold in its statement and a rather special touch is that she has placed herself in much of her work. I found it quite fascinating.

At the other end there was a class in progress, led by the same artist, but we were invited in to browse the work that covered the walls there. It was all very light-hearted and the 'students', mostly in mid to later life, were clearly enjoying themselves immensely.

We are planning to redecorate our bedroom and as a part of that we want to find one or more good paintings to form a focus. We can then design the room around those. I'm hoping that we can settle on something from Shraddha, maybe in the spring when she returns from abroad.

At present it's designed around a large fabric wall-hanging that we brought back from Peru several years ago. We had been living in the Andes for a couple of months, working in a refugee village so it was a 'souvenir' with some memories attached.

OK, enough rambling for today. How was your day, Lil?

Hi Les,

Sorry I've only just seen your message from last night. We must have passed each other as I was signing out

Do you know BMT in here? He had art classes over a couple of years and some of his work has been exhibited to advertise the classes. He's very talented

Willem, you will see his meerkat painting on the <./>FrontPage</.> is another marvelously talented artist

Peru?? Wow! You've had some exciting travels!

lil x

Hi Lil
Ships that pass in the night eh?

No, I don't know BMT I'm afraid. Thanks for linking to the meercats though. They're great.

Peru was back in 1996 — goodness, now I come to write it down it seems so long ago! After a few days in Lima with a friend, acclimatising, we then took a bus for about 8 hours and travelled to Huancayo in the upper Mantaro Valley. It's one of the high Andean valleys and is at about 10,500 feet. To get there we had to climb to around 12,000 feet and we felt pretty rough with the altitude sickness at the time. Had we known, we should have gone part of the way and stayed somewhere overnight to get used to a higher altitude before making the trip over the top.

Our work took us a little further up the mountains to a small rural community called Serito where almost all of the people were refugees from the Sendero Luminoso terrorists. Every family had lost someone, everyone had a tale to tell. It was our first encounter with real poverty. I had never before been into a home and seen that they had nothing. It didn't stop them offering you food when you visited though. One family had a few chickens but they were too poor to eat the eggs; they had to sell them to buy cheaper food in order to have enough to feed all of them.

Since then we've been to many other developing countries but Peru sticks in my mind because of that impact.

Les

Hi Les,

I once worked for an accountant and he was trying to get some of his best clients to sponsor a youth football teams' kit. Most refused.

The ones who did offer any payment were those who could actually least afford it.

There are lessons to be learned, don't you think?

lil x

Hi Lil
Too right! We often think it would be good for all youngsters to work voluntarily for a few months, maybe more, in a developing country. We have a young nephew who went to Romania to work on a project in an orphanage for special needs kids. He was like a different lad afterwards.


Les

Decided to brighten up a November day by going to see Rowan Atkinson in "Johnny English Reborn". It was so funny; we're still chuckling now. It's always good to see RA in something a bit more articulate than "Mr Bean", funny as that was at the time.

How was your day?


Les

Oh! I'm sorry I didn't see your previous posting. I was a little busy last night

Rowan Atkinson! He makes me cringe as Mr Bean, I really can't watch him!

I loved his Blackadder series. Pure genius! I have yet to any of the Johnny English films


lil x

Hi Lil!

Don't worry about not always replying straight away. I know you have a life!

I agree, Mr Bean was cringe-making and I found it funnier at first when it was so different from anything around at the time. Later programmes started to wear a bit thin. But yes, Blackadder was brilliant and I reckon if you enjoyed that, you will like the Johnny English films.

It means a 12-mile trip to the cinema so it has to be worth it! Today we combined it with a little shopping, a bite of lunch and a stroll along by the harbour. Very pleasant! You can see what it was like here:

https://byfiles.storage.live.com/y1p8voH-jlRy6WWnD7iHtm4MEbQjhOGxabwfJc2yJXo4-Q6RQ-FxZasC2i7wd147g18njvCdOgpIOVkwlM8KOonCA/IMAGE_092.jpg?psid=1

Les

Hmm... I expected that to show as a live link. I'll try this...

https://byfiles.storage.live.com/y1p8voH-jlRy6WWnD7iHtm4MEbQjhOGxabwfJc2yJXo4-Q6RQ-FxZasC2i7wd147g18njvCdOgpIOVkwlM8KOonCA/IMAGE_092.jpg?psid=1

OK, that didn't work either! Perhaps you could just copy and paste into your browser address bar.

I'll have a go at working it out in the morning.

There is a lot of excess coding which needs to be removed

Yes, I had forgotten that H2g2 doesn't 'read' html. This may be a better location to copy and paste into your browser:

https://by2.storage.live.com/items/A670E392A1114542!1738:Scaled1024/IMAGE_092.jpg?psid=1&ck=0&ex=720

See how you get on and let me know.


Les

Sorry, I am getting and error code 403 with https and http

Uh-oh! Have to think of something else. Do you use Facebook?

You can email me on lil_h2g2ATyahooDOTcoDOTuk

OK, I'll do that! Thanks. Then you'll have an email address for me too.
Les

That would be sooper!

Or souper? Chunky vegetable!

"Time for bed", said Zebedee!