I wrote this during a moment of reflection in front of Monet's famous Water Lilies, and it's only lightly edited here. Scroll down for more information about the gallery. It's hard to resist people watching instead. Just two elliptical galleries, no hurry, no trying to take in every painting and learn the significance of what's… Continue reading Paris Sketch: Monet at l’Orangerie
Tag: word sketch
Sketch: Saudade on a Saturday afternoon
[Lip-syncing: Fallin'] Alicia Keys is playing from the speaker in the corner. I’m enjoying it not just because I’m transported back to Saturday afternoons with Trevor Nelson on Radio 1, in my sunny yellow flat, the first flat I owned. My first self-created nest. But also because the music is…not loud…but insistently present. I have… Continue reading Sketch: Saudade on a Saturday afternoon
Denmark Sketch: The School Run on Two Wheels
We’re not quite in the habit yet, though the mornings are light again. There’s always ‘something’: someone’s sick, or I have to drive straight off to an appointment, or there’s a bulky planet costume to take with us, or we have to drop MT at work, or, more truthfully, two out of three of us… Continue reading Denmark Sketch: The School Run on Two Wheels
Congo Sketch: The School Run at Walking Pace
It's another typically untypical morning in Congo, where no day ever goes quite as planned. Today, our driver isn't with us, as he had to take his child into hospital overnight with suspected malaria. So MT has taken the car to work with him, and I've hitched a lift with our neighbour to drop the… Continue reading Congo Sketch: The School Run at Walking Pace
The Power of Yes
Time to start carrying a towel... Recently I wrote about the feeling I had, a couple of years ago, that I'd given (up) the best years of my life to being a trailing spouse and having babies. I entered my forties at that time, thinking my peak years were behind me, work-wise. Irrational though I knew… Continue reading The Power of Yes
Congo Sketch – Waiting Room
The clinic's always busy on a Monday morning, the maladies of the weekend being called to order as the doors open. Patients sit, patiently, on long wooden benches set in schoolroom rows. Like the GP waiting room I remember from my childhood, where eyes were all raised expectantly to the number display. (I remember that waiting… Continue reading Congo Sketch – Waiting Room
The Frustrated Nester 