Thursday July 7th 2022

 Another muddled and muddling day in mine and Lois's house-move saga. We "waited in" for 2 hours (not strictly true because we rarely go anywhere), for a drain-unblocking guy to come in and unblock our drain. The guy didn't turn up, so this morning I rang to complain. I found out that I hadn't engaged the company I thought I'd engaged to do the job - they say they have no record of the job.

Later, after a bit of detective work, I find out which company I'd in fact rung yesterday. I think I must have googled the name of the firm that I wanted to engage, and a quite different company came out top of the search results - I expect they had paid Google a lot of money for this. And I never noticed it was a different firm that I was ringing. 

What madness!!!!

Anyway this firm are going to be sending somebody first thing tomorrow morning (9 am Friday). They can't do it today because they're sorting out a burst water main problem.

But what a crazy world we live in !!!!!! 

And our crazy world is not helped by the fact that Lois and I are feeling a bit distracted and mithered just at the moment, to put it mildly, what with all the house-move hassles going on.

Also this morning I get a reply back from our solicitors about changes to mine and Lois's wills consequent on the house-move. Even though I don't understand half the legal/financial terms in the email, I try and summarise it for Ed, our son-in-law to comment on. It's nice having a lawyer for a son-in-law, no doubt about that.

 a typical solicitor, seen here signing 

a confusing letter addressed to a client

11:00 Luckily Lois and I can take a break at 11 am to process some ripe or partly ripe gooseberries, while we relax with a coffee and a biscuit on the patio.

Earlier in the year I mentally questioned Lois's decision to steam ahead with nurturing the enormous fruit and vegetable produce that comes out of our garden - why bother, I couldn't help thinking, when somebody else was going to be buying our house and reaping all the benefits of her work, because we would be out of here.

How wrong I was! In fact it takes ages to sell a house and buy another house, while getting all the legal work done and dusted. And it's July now, and we're already harvesting vegetables and fruit to put on our table virtually every day.

See? It all makes sense now, doesn't it !!!!!!

15:00 We sit down on the couch with a cup of tea and the second halves of our respective tarts - we had "the first halves" yesterday afternoon. Mine is a treacle , and Lois's is a lemon.

We switch on the TV and watch the end of a film we saw a bit of last night - an adaptation of EM Forster's book "Where Angels Fear To Tread" (1991), on the Great Movies channel.

What a disaster! We can't make head nor tail of the story! The film has all the big faults that Radio Times readers are constantly complaining about:  (1) mumbled dialogue in echo-y buildings (2) dark lighting for the scenes, and (3) loud background music. It's true that most Radio Times readers are old, like us, but I've got no doubt that the complaints are legitimate ones.

We get to the end of the film, and suddenly we realise we haven't even see the star, Helen Mirren, not even once! Where were you, Helen???!!! [interrobang, interrobang, interrobang]

Then we realise that our YouView recording system has chopped the two and a half hour film into two segments, and we've been watching the second part only. And the Helen Mirren character has already died before we started watching!

What madness !!!!! [That's enough madness for one day! - Ed]

just one of many Helen Mirren scenes we didn't see -

what madness !!!

The worst part is trying to hear what people are saying. Lois says the scenes in England are generally more understandable, because the rooms are carpeted with proper curtains at the windows which helps to stop any echoing. 

In Italy, by contrast, people keep their floors bare and uncarpeted, and they only have shutters on the windows.

Lois noticed this during our one and only visit to Italy in 1997, when we went to see our daughter Alison, then a student at the University of Pisa.

Flashback to 1997: Lois with our daughter Alison on the platform

of Pisa railway station; Ali had come to see us off on our journey

home to England via Turin and Paris

1997: me in Turin on the way home to England

Of course in England recently we've been going the same way as the Italians. No fashionable young couples would be seen dead on a carpet. And I've certainly never seen one there, that's for sure!

But what madness! 

[I told you No more madness! You're getting overexcited again. There'll be tears by bedtime, you mark my words! - Ed]

17:30 Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her great-niece Molly's yoga class on zoom.  I slip into the kitchen and spot a gooseberry pie on the worktop - yum yum!

I spot a gooseberry pie on the worktop...

..and later we enjoy a piece of it on the sofa, which is nice

Well, it's been a muddled and muddling day for me and Lois, but even more muddling for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, that's for sure. And the change in Boris's fortunes hasn't passed unnoticed by Punchline, the No. 1 news source for Gloucestershire businesses, who can always be relied on to keep their finger on the pulse.

Boris on a recent visit to Glouccester

At least Boris is able to go for a swim at the end of the day, as Steve, our American brother-in-law, reports from Norristown USA. Lois and I haven't got time to do that unfortunately, now, which is a pity!

Lucky Boris!!!!

And we also read today, in "Punchline", that one of the many resignations that led to Boris's downfall was that of Cheltenham MP, Alex Chalk, who resigned as Solicitor-General.

Lois and I realise that all the resigning government members were simply following the Westminster "herd instinct", as Boris said, and were mainly seeking to distance themselves from Boris, so as not to ruin their chances for a job under the new Prime Minister, whoever it turns out to be.

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!!!

Poor Boris !!!!!   [Make your mind up! - Ed]

20:00 We settle down on the couch and watch another programme in Waldemar Januszczak's series "The Art Mysteries", on the Sky Arts channel.

This one is all about Manet's famous painting "Déjeuner sur l'herbe", which scandalised the art world back in 1863, and in Januszcsak's view, changed the world of art for ever, enabling the later schools of Impressionism and Modern Art in general.

Edouard Manet's "Déjeuner sur l'herbe" (Luncheon on the Grass) (1863)

The picture caused a scandal because the woman was naked but the students with her were not, plus the fact that the woman has a "brazen, don't care" expression on her face. And in those far-off days, nudity in paintings was only okay if the scene was historical or mythological - it wasn't something you put into a modern or contemporary setting. See?

The model for the nude woman was one of Manet's favourite models, Victorine Meurent. Although many critics described her as ugly, Manet obviously didn't share that opinion, because he painted Victorine obsessively for a decade.

Here she is dressed in a matador's costume that Manet arranged to be specially made for her by a Spanish tailor in Paris:

In this next one, Victorine is appearing as a street singer, leaving work.

And this is her as a "lady of the night", who's just said goodbye to a customer. 

Manet makes clear in the painting that the customer was an outwardly respectable, ageing, middle-class man, because Victorine is holding a monocle that the old guy has forgotten to put back in his pocket. Easy mistake to make, I would imagine haha! 

She's also brandishing a posy of flowers - it was usual for customers to send these in advance to their chosen woman to let her know they were coming. See? Simples - it wasn't possible to send "texts" in those far-off days, but you could easily arrange for a posy of flowers to arrive. What a madness it all was!!!!

Most famously of all, Victorine appears as a courtesan in one of Manet's other controversial paintings, "Olympia", also painted in 1863, again showcasing Victorine's trademark "brazen" look.

In the painting, Monet has showcased her greeting her next client: i.e. whoever is looking at the picture. Because whoever it is has just arrived, and has brought her a nice bouquet of flowers.

But, back to "Déjeuner sur l'herbe", the famous "picnic on the grass".

Manet said that the original inspiration for his bombshell picture was a famous painting, possibly by Giorgione, of a "concert champette" - an outdoor music party, which features a pair of costumed musicians with a pair of naked muses. 

Nudity in this case was "okay", because it was a classical setting. See?

Here is Giorgione's painting, the one that inspired Manet:

If nothing else, this "Art Mysteries" series has taught Lois and me how much painters used to "copy" or "reference" other works of art in their paintings. And Manet got his inspiration for his "Picnic on the Grass" from the above picture by Giorgione of a naughty, but sparsely attended, classical outdoor concert. 

Who knew? [I expect a lot of people knew that! - Ed]

And for the composition of "Picnic on the Grass" Manet referenced a print of Marcantonio Raimondi's of Raphael's "Judgment of Paris".

See the group on the bottom right of the picture? The woman with her arm crooked up to her chin?

All Manet had to do was to put Victorine's face on it, and Bob's your uncle haha!

Some other shocking revelations from Waldemar Januszczak's analysis tonight include the fact that the woman in the background of "Picnic on the Grass" is actually "having a pee". That's how French women do it, Waldemar insists. He's seen them doing it in the sea when he's been at the beach on his holidays.

brought into sharp focus here: the woman in the background,

who, Waldemar says, is "having a pee" - what madness !!!!

Also, the crazy bullfinch flying at the top of the picture, right in the centre, is, Waldemar says, a cheeky/sacrilegious  reference to a lot of Renaissance "baptism" pictures, where you see a dove at the top, representing the Holy Ghost.

Who would have guessed that? 

I remember that when, long ago, I was for about 12 years editor of "French Window", a newsletter for Francophiles, I inserted a spoof coupon into one edition of the newsletter, immediately following an article on Monet's "Picnic on the Grass". 

I explained to readers that if they simply cut out the coupon and presented it to counter staff at Membury Wiltshire M4 Motorway Services cafeteria, that they would be offered £1.50 off the price of a three course meal, provided they were fully clothed. I remember stressing that Welcome Break, the company that runs Membury Services, did not encourage nudity in their outdoor picnic areas. And as far as I know,  this is still the case.

I learnt later, however, that one reader had taken that spoof seriously, cut out the coupon, and tried to get money off a motorway meal at Membury Services on the M4, only to be told that "the manager says he knows nothing about this".

flashback to 2008: the magazine for Francophiles

that I used to edit

What a crazy world we live in!!!!

[Oh just to go bed! - Ed]

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!!