...because this afternoon we went down to Strawberry Hill House in west London for a private viewing of the artist Anne Sudworth's latest exhibition. And a very nice afternoon it was, too. We like Annie a lot, and we love her work and we have some of her prints, but it was the first time I'd had the chance to look at the originals. Interesting stuff; the prints - beautiful though they are - don't really give you a proper sense of how subtle and marvellous an artist she is. We took some Polish friends of ours with us, and they enjoyed the day a lot too.
Strawberry Hill was a good choice. It's undergoing renovation right now, so there's a slightly raw feel to the place. All the wall coverings have been stripped off and you can see the panelling underneath - there are carpenters' measurements in pencil on the panels, hundreds of years ago, as clear as the day they were written, and in the Long Gallery a bit of stuff and a list of names written in chalk.
And then we went visiting some friends.