This year's Christmas tree has been purchased, delivered and bedecked.
We are moving closer to Christmas.
This year's Christmas tree has been purchased, delivered and bedecked.
This year, we have a big one. Over eight feet tall.
We used some Christmas money from my mum to afford the extra height.
Ross bought some extra lights to add to the wondrous splendour.
Linda, Ian and Mary came up to visit mum before Christmas. Ian showed her some videos of Freddie, who is just over one year old, taking his first tentative steps in the world. She was delighted despite, and possibly because of, the ninety-three year age gap between them.
She is, apparently, still very sharp but the mental filter which stands between thoughts and good manners has now deserted her and she is (shall we say) blunt and forthright in her utterances.
And then, she is suddenly bat shit crazy. Apparently I visit her regularly and hide in the bushes in the garden. Allegedly, I've also told her that, if there's a fire, she is to climb out onto the (very broad) window ledge outside her bedroom. I suspect she simply wants to be carried away by a firemen.
In the evening, the three Prescotts, Ross and I gathered for a meal at the Sultan restaurant in Waterloo. This is probably the first time that Ross has sat down to eat out with someone outside of his own family for well over two years and possibly even three. He managed well, rode the triggers and then had a wobbly when we got home. Very proud of him.
Ross's parents came over to Merseyside to see Sam and Tom and then to meet up with Ross and I for lunch at the Walker Art Gallery and a visit to the new blockbuster exhibition.
Sam's been having a tough time of it recently. The Learned Body which regulates his branch of the medical profession does not appear to have moved with the times and, consequently, the assessment procedures appear, frankly, not to be fit for purpose. Sam was recently one of thirty people who attended an assessment at the Manchester assessment centre. None passed. And these are people who are deemed by their consultants to be skilled enough to be left alone in charge of busy A&E departments.
I don't know what the quality control procedures are but questions concerning the physical composition of fire-doors and the length of time a fire extinguisher can be expected to operate for seem to stretch the bounds of the definition of compentence. Anyhow, there is now an ongoing dispute. Meanwhile, the stress of all of that compounded with the pressures of the last two years left Sam feeling depleted and, on his consultant's advice and his GP's instructions, he is now having some home rest until the New Year.
I enjoyed the exhibition - Sickert: A Life in Art. I hadn't realised that the Walker held the largest collection of Sickert drawings in the country and, in fact, I was well into adulthood before I realised that there were, in fact, two paintings by Sickert in the general collection.
The painting opposite is of the gallery monkeys in The Old Bedford music hall in London. The reproduction is brighter in tone that the work as seen on the wall. I fact many of Sickert's paintings overall are presented with a very subdued and dull pallette. The first section places this one work in the context of the many other paintings that Sickert produced which feature both audience and stars of the late Victorian music hall just at the point when more middle class people began to attend and the working classes were forced upstairs into the gallery.
The work below is a startling perspective of the second gallery at the Gaieté Montparnasse in Paris.
The second painting which I grew up with is this seaside scene of bathers at Dieppe. I enjoyed the sequence of paintings of both Venice and Dieppe as,once again, they gave a context to the painting I knew well.
The architectural paintings of both Venice and Dieppe gave an idea as to the skill of Sickert's draughtsmanship and the daring with which he made some of his compositional choices.
Also, as the work below shows, he was obviously very keen to present both the dark alleyway and the sunlit boulevard.
Sickert lived into his 80s and was still practising as World War II began. The later paintings are more derivative and some are outright pastiche. For this reason, I feel that I can only count him as a good and interesting artist rather than a great practitioner.
However, the dark Camden Town works of his middle years earn him his place in the lower tiers of the pantheon. Sickert painted a number of sex workers resident in the area. He latched onto a contemporary murder in the area of Mornington Crescent and rode on the coat tails of the still sensational Jack the Ripper legend.
A dark pallette and an almost prototypical cinematic eye for composition produce a heady concoction of sex and violence which unsettled the Edwardian and Georgian bourgeoisie.
In the spirit of giving, I was an angel of mercy and gave Danny his pre-Christmas booster jab.
He was a brave little soldier.
He did cry out but he took it like a man - at least he did until he came to a shuddering conclusion.
Bless.
I received this text message and so did Roland. Roland's partner, Colin, did not get a message. From this, we both deduced that venue in question was the Liverpool Empire and that someone else attending The Rake's Progress at the beginning of the month must have tested positive somewhere along the lines.
My lateral flow test came back negative.
However, it is not always easy to understand the implications of the current mass infection by the Omicron variant of Covid-19.
The current situation sees people displaying some of their better qualities...
...and some of those which are less helpful...
...although I find the cynicism all too understandable.
Many people feel that the government have been taking the piss with their inability to follow their own rules.
I do wonder how difficult it will be to get passes for this year's Downing Street Rave.
Few people trust the government to investigate the situation objectively.
This year has been a year during which there have been many ironies. There is a point though where "irony" becomes "a terrible irony". After that, the irony drains away. What I see and read here is more like a horrible truth (And, while we're about it, can anyone tell me where the UK is at with its belligerent threat to suspend Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol).
Consequently, many people feel that our current Prime Minister has become something of a laughing stock, although, personally, I find it very difficult to believe how anyone ever thought him to be trustworthy, capable or reliable in the first place.
