Hidden by Cloud
30 May

Well the rain continued. And it was cold for the time of year.

Southern water companies still requested drought orders. At this time of the year, most of the rainfall either evaporates or goes into the growing vegetation. Little seeps into the water table which is what they rely on down south. Up here, of course, we have damned valleys full of the stuff.

Ross and I have both resorted to using our light boxes; it has been that gloomy.

Monday, particularly, it tippled down. I know because I was out in it. I was in Liverpool for an interview for a job with Liverpool City Council. How do I feel about it in retrospect? Well, the most attractive thing about the appointment is the notion of supported career development. I don't think that I have ever had that opportunity. However, it would mean going back to full-time five-day-a-week work and I'm not sure that that is where my future lies (in the medium to long term anyway).

In any case, I learnt that the interviews were being spread over three days. This means that they will be looking at, what, 12-18 people. And so, in effect, the final decision becomes something of a lottery. They almost do with a second round of interviews to sort out their ultimate decision. So, I hold out very little hope of actually having to make a decision about moving from Connect - for the time being.

Earlier in the week, my lady friends at yoga class had been very interested in the daylight bulbs that we have around the house - much cheaper than a fully fledged lightbox and probably just as efficacious. Our light boxes are still going strong, by the way, some two years after we first bought them.

And then, on Wednesday, suddenly the clouds dispersed; suddenly there was light streaming into the back rooms at sunset as the sun finally moved into a channel where it is not hidden by houses; suddenly, when we went to bed, there was light behind the curtains; suddenly, when I got up at 11pm for a snack, there was deep indigo twilight in the Western sky; suddenly, when I got up at 3am for a nightly pee, there was dawn-like glimmerings in the East. Suddenly, there was sun.

We've just finished watching the BBC adaptation of The Line Of Beauty which I read last year. It hasn't changed my mind that it's a most unlikable work because the characters themselves were entirely nasty, self-centred and unpleasant. Tim McInnery was excellent as Gerald Fadden.

However, I did think that it was a lot funnier that the book and it persuaded me (thanks to some immaculate acting by Dan Stevens) that the main character, Nick Guest, may actually have been a deluded and romantic aesthete who real thought that he was wanted by the Upper Classes rather than simply sponging off them.

The ensemble playing was excellent; the original music was haunting; the 80s soundtrack was very nostalgic; Alex Wyndham's Wani was adorable; the sex was titillating without being graphic. But I still couldn't like it. I'll stick with last year's three stars.

It was a Bank Holiday weekend. These do not hold the same sense of promise as they used to do now that I don't work Mondays. Anyhow, we did nothing on the Saturday apart from go to the Plaza cinema in the evening for our second summer blockbuster - X-Men III. It was everything that you would expect - I can't say that I liked it and I can't say that I disliked it. The moving of the Golden Gate Bridge to link Alcatraz and the mainland was visually spectacular - particularly since I have seen them both.

Sunday, I took some time from Quakers and Ross and I went down to Tate Liverpool for a scout around the various exhibition floors.

Ross specifically wanted to re-visit the exhibition by Bruce Nauman Make Me Think Me. He went to the private view but spent most of his time networking so that he saw little of the actual show. Our visit was punctuated by gallery staff giving him a friendly greeting. I hated it.

I was on safer territory with Henry Moore. Here, at least I have a sense that I can appreciate a craft even if I do not always like the final product or if I detect a sameness to the body of work. At least there's a blend of the cerebral and the body and the earth.

I also liked the first half of the 20th Century retrospective from the permanent collection. Here again there was a sense of tradition and of craft even if it was radically re-interpreted (as with this Matisse). In the second half, everything was rejected and (mostly) the visual arts became a self-indulgent, intellectual parody of themselves.

The revelation was the final exhibition by Marie-Louise von Motesiczky - of whom I had never heard before. It was quite simply sensational. Like many she had to get out of Vienna in the 1930s and she ended up, via Paris, in Hampstead where she lived the rest of her life. Her work is a strange blend of the Mitteleurope and the English.

She produced landscapes, portraits and fantasies of high quality. Over a long life, she chronicled her mother's growing infirmity of mind and body with forensic clarity and compassion. I loved the whole show and would love to return.

Monday was a big day in the family social calendar. It is nearly ten years since Ross and I first met. In all of that time, although Ross and met my parents many times and I have met his on numerous occasions and we have both shared in each other's family events like Grace's 75th birthday and Ross's sister's wedding.

However, the two sets of parents have never actually met though Christmas greetings have been exchanged telephonically.

Well, now they have. Ross and I hosted a meal for all four of them on Bank Holiday Monday. It was an ordeal. I won't pretend otherwise. My parents showed their age a little with an inability (or unwillingness) to talk about anything which lay outside of their normal compass. Any new topic of conversation was immediately dragged back to something that they knew about.

Still, it's another rite of passage accomplished as I move towards a more general integration of the various parts of my life.