My birthday this year really was just another day.
I spent it in London but I spent it in London with a group of people who I didn't know.
I was at Friends' House for the day on a training course for people working with youngsters and, since I co-ordinate the Children's Meeting at Southport Preparative Meeting, fellow Southport Quakers suggested that I might like to go.
It's the first proper training course I've been on for some time and it reminded me of how little formal staff development I get through my professional work. We worked through some of the issues for planning work with young people and the sorts of difficulties that we all faced. In fact, one of the best things about the day was that sense of not being alone in facing problems and how the problems cropped up in larger meetings than Southport's all round the country.
I also learned about All Age Meetings for Worship and a thing called the settling jar which has lots of sparkly things in suspension and allows people to go quiet whilst watching the shaken up contents settle down.
I was very happy by the time I arrived back at Lime Street late on Saturday evening.
I'd used the training course as a way of getting some time for myself in London as well. Earlier this year, I decided that I should start doing a little more on my own and for myself. My aborted trip to Buxton in April was supposed to be a part of that - which is vastly ironic really.
I travelled down to the capital on the Friday and booked into the George Hotel on Marchmont Street.
I spent the afternoon down at the National Gallery among an exhibition of
Renoir landscapes. Over the years, I have really come to enjoy these odd couple
of hours spent in London Galleries with moderately sized exhibitions. A few of
those occasions have been real sources of inspiration and solace.
This current exhibition was good and enjoyable. There were some lovely canvasses
and, yes, you could see the way that Renoir's technique loosened over the years
as he absorbed and experimented with (what we now call) Expressionist techniques.
It was also interesting to see some absolute duds - paintings executed in North
Africa and Venice - which the catalogue persisted is praising to the skies. An
easy three stars.
![[Three Stars - Good]](3.gif){kind=small}
After a nap and a freshen up, I treated myself to a large meal at at new restaurant on Marchmont Street just down from the hotel called Balfour.
And the it was down to the Coliseum for a performance of English National Opera's
production of Leonard Bernstein's On the Town. I had high hopes for this; I
wanted some real snazzy Broadway entertainment and it was good - just not quite
good enough. I have a feeling that in such a big theatre the half empty house sort
of drained a lot of the energy from the stage and the production wasn't really quite
lavish or clever enough to fill such a large performance space.
Bernstein's music was well served by conductor Simon Lee and one performance, that
of Caroline O'Connor as Hildy, was world class. The others were fine but not
sensational thought I did like June Whitfield's cameo as Madame Maude P Dilly.
It was a steady three star evening.