Here we are again

Once more I sit and watch the world go by..Don't you just love the view from the members cafe at the Tate Modern?
I love the splash of colour that the barge gives.


Where I saw this amazing exhibition. As you can see it is not open until tomorrow but I manages to blag my way in with my members card. I would not normally make a special trip to see this but I promise you it will blow your socks of. This is a really brilliant exhibition vast but each room tells a different story.
I read in the paper an article by his grandson that Rodchenko became so cold during the freezing cold Russian winters that he put all his sculptures in the wood burner to keep warm! Luckily they have been recreated from photographs so we can enjoy them again. I am mow a huge fan and will add the catalogue to my list of wants.
I would have bought it then and there but I had just spent £40 on over 12 old Christies catalogues which to an art teacher are manna from heaven.

I Spy

Cy Twombly

and Takashi Murakami, both coming to Gagosian Galleries in London this week. What a treat.

Tomorrow I am taking nearly 40 students to the Tate Modern, simple no? No, one is severely asthmatic AND has a nut allergy, another is epileptic, oh joy.

Jorma Puranen

A large slice of ethereal Finnish beauty can be found here This just makes me ache to go back to Scandinavia

The view from here

The rain wash lashing down on the car windscreen so heavily it created an amazing view

The prodigal daughter is back. Already she is missing the clear air, the snowy peaks and waking up in the bosom of a relatively sane nuclear family. So it was back to earth with a bump. Daisy loved Switzerland and she was thoroughly spoilt by her host family.

I packed her off with Yorkshire tea. A fruit loaf, shortbread and Marmite they loved all the sweet stuff but I think the jury was still out on the Marmite! Daisy returned with lots of Swiss cheese, more chocolate than even the staunchest chocoholic could deal with but which I will dutifully consume before lent kicks in and a beautiful Swiss penknife.

Daisy stayed in what sounds like a stunning house that had been built into the side of a mountain. It was only accessible via a steep road which you then descended from, via some even steeper steps. God knows what this poor girl will make of our house of chaos and carnage. I have got 6 weeks to whip it into some kind of order.

This week, I have to look forward to, my annual visit to The Tate Modern with 40 students, oh lucky me. but do not forget we do get the holidays and oh, I seem to have a week off next week, so off to Oxford I shall go.

The highlight of this weekend was a visit to Battersea Dogs Home. He has finally decided that life is just not the same without a dog. my criteria if I have to endure another animal slowly trashing my house and sanity is that I must be able to pick up it's crap with one hand. So no bloody Labrador's

A visit to Battersea is always sad, I could have bundles up at least 5 dogs but very few were suitable for a household such as ours. Most were for those families with out children, we offered to trade, but they did not seem interested.

However despite the excitement of the girls, we have lots of forms to fill and interviews to pass. Watch this space.

Something for the weekend

I watched this last weekend, it was just sublime, such a wonderful film both visually stunning with lovely music.

Daisy returns home tomorrow, yeah.

When she was younger I remember that every time she returned from a school trip she was utterly vile. Once when she came home she hit me hard with her bag and roundly cursed me for not writing to her EVERY DAY like ALL the other parents. More fool them I said laughing (making her even angrier)

The problem is, you see, we as parents tend to refer to our own experience as children. Trust me I neither expected or ever received a letter myself as a child, and so did not think writing about the flotsam of my life would possibly interest my daughter, whilst she was living it up.

I would be very, very privileged indeed to get so much as a text from her.

Short and oh so selective are the memories of a teenager.

Teenager Two has not missed her sister one bit, she confessed that at times she had quite forgotten about her, her scratching, (eczema) her mess, her incessant laughing at Monty Python replays.

Kitty's current favourite 'make me smile' moment is the new Cadbury's Dairy Milk advert. She loves them all, but this one seems to particularly tickle her funny bone and so she has saved it on to her mobile phone.

That something so simple can make her happy gives me hope. In stark contrast many of the girls I teach have, by Kitty's age been drunk, stayed out all night, and sadly in some cases already lost their virginity. I once had a student say rather too loudly "I wish I was still a virgin" My colleague laughed when I told her this and said "I bet he wishes her mother still was!"

Saatch Gallery pt 2

I went to this exhibition about 3 weeks ago, I was unaware at the time that it was possible to take photographs in the gallery, but I always have a camera with me, sadly I also had both Leyla and Kitty with me as well. All was going well until Leyla realised you could take photographs, at which point a glint appeared in her eye and away she went, snap, snap, snap. Well kitty could not allow that to happen, so the pair of them brawled their way around the entire gallery trying to snatch the camera away from each other,taking it in turns to sulk or hide, either way my day was ruined.
Their reward was of course a shopping trip to Zara. This was my fault as I was convinced that there was no children's department in the one on Hans Place. How wrong could I be, they both sniffed it out downstairs and spent nearly an hour trying on clothes and arguing over who could have what etc. On the way back kitty announced that she had left her MP3 player on the chair in Jigsaw (I was only looking) So I phoned up, they had found it but they were about to close. Kitty sulked all the way home.
I went to pick it up the following week, they had lost it! Trust me a teenager parted from her beloved MP3 player is no fun. They said they would look for it and post it, which they duly did, at the cost of £6! special delivery. Joy thy name is adolescence. This picture is HUGE and was the most outstanding image of the day by Qui Jie

A fragment from a different picture by the same artist

I do not know who made this stunning sculpture, I had intended to go back at a later date to write down the names of artists I liked, because on the day I had lost the will to live at this particular moment in time.

Where did my week go? It is Friday tomorrow already. I have dutifully written my reports and now the assessment begins..

The view from here

Oh where to begin, how did my weekend go from 2 days to 4 days, I should have been elated, but being incarcerated in the house with everyone lost its gloss after just one day.
It is such a cliche but despite living in the northern hemisphere I reside in a city that grinds to a halt after just the merest sprinkling of snow, so when it was hit with 10 inches of the stuff it shut down for not one, but two whole days. as you can see the two girls I had left, had some fun but even they became jaded and very fractious by Tuesday. The previous day I had met mother and taken her to the Saatchi Gallery. Yes, I know I failed to post about my first visit, but I am still too traumatised by the events to write them down but give me time.
Incredibly even though it was just 3 weeks later, the exhibition had changed. I originally saw a contemporary Chinese Art exhibition, now this had been replaced by a Contemporary Iranian exhibition. Leyla much preferred the former, I the latter.

Three Generations. This is not a trick but the view through one of the exhibits, I did not realise that you could see our reflection until I loaded the photographs back at school.

Butter wouldn't melt. Not.

The way Saatchi has melded the old with the new is brilliantly seamless, I loved the glass extension, which gives you some wonderful vistas. The lighting in the gallery is the best I have ever seen too. What makes it so very good is that all this come for free.

My favourite pieces by a country mile were by Hayv Kahraman. I could not for a while think of what they reminded me of, but having seen her website here and more images here The penny dropped. Aubrey Beardsley
The paintings were very, very beautiful and well worth seeking out

I have actually seen this done in Cyprus, we were staying in the village and his uncle killed a sheep for a big barbecue that night. It looks horrible but it is by far the quickest and least stressful way for an animal to die. I liked the contrast of the butchery with the delicacy of the clothes

and what clothes they were, above are four close ups, the detail was amazing

Flag by Sara Rahbar more from here

Like Everyday by Shadi Ghadirian has a wonderful website here

I preferred this exhibition to the last one, I felt it was technically better and a more interesting and diverse range of images .

Another factor that makes me a big fan of Saatchi is that you can take photographs, which I love to do, that's when I can wrestle the camera from Leyla's very tight grip!

After the gallery we mooched around the Kings Road for a while, but it was very cold and mother was peckish, so we went to what is becoming my favourite restaurant, Oriel. Again a lovely meal, great service and we warmed up nicely. Which is just as well considering what came after.