Went to Kettles Yard saturday and had a look at the latest exhibition. It has been a while since I have been to the gallery and next time I must make time to visit the house as well. The house is gorgeous in it's white walled, book lined simplicity.



Exactly the sort of house you could imagine living in happily forever. It is protected by a team of silverhaired ladies and on arrival you have to ring the bell to have a little pleasant smiling face peer around the door and invite you in. It's a rather lovely experience in itself.

Anyway the exhibition was by Mary Martin and entitled 'The end is always to achieve simplicity' which seems entirely appropriate for Kettles Yard.



But it didn't really do much for me, it was sort of mainly blocky bits of wood and perspex arranged geometrically and yes the arrangement was well executed but that was it really...

Yesterday after spending four months working opposite the building and staring through the window at a large Henry Moore I went to have a quick lunchtime look at the Fitzwilliam museum. This is a complete contrast.. the outside of the building has vast columns, and inside is decorated in a gaudy complicated overabundant swishy style!!!! But tucked away are a couple of Picasso's, a lovely Braque and a very simple Giacometti bust which were all very pleasing to the eye.... wandered further and as it is chronologically organised lost interest the older the paintings became....

Thank you to the someone who checked out Delilah in the Blog Search directory and gave me a rating!!! It is number 8 in the top rated list... what is funny though is that it has only taken two votes to get to that elevated position!!!!!

January seems to be a time for reflection and detox!! Doing well on the detox... no alcohol since Jan 1st, no cakes, no meat and only a biscuit or two... loads of coffee though but there are limits to self denial!!!! But reflection, well had a bit of a ponder yesterday... I started writing Delilah in Sept 2002 when I was working for Reproduction and Human Fertility- two scientific journals that apparently now have closed!!!! I was living quietly in Cambridge and sort of waiting for something to happen... Then, the move to London where I have definitely learnt one major life lesson... I will never ever ever again move in with someone without actually getting to know them first... the whole awful slow discovery that there was a total mismatch of characters was a really dificult process to go through and left me in a difficult situation to extricate myself from.. But ..... and there's always a but.... I have gathered along the way some really good new friends and once the decision was made to move out I had some excellent adventures indeed!!!!!!! Involvement with Greenpeace gave me more new and lovely friends and more adventure... Glastonbury was a major turning point as it was there that I realised I had to get back to working with children and working outside!!! Plus the total incongruity that I felt when asked what I did, I can remember saying 'I work as a PA for a fashion company in central London' and it just didn't seem like those words could ever have actually found their way out of my mouth but they did and more weirdly they were true!! I returned to Drake's full of disastifaction!!!! So now back in Cambridge but heading off for a summer outdoors!!! Have a sailing course coming up and well just look at the picture... the high ropes section looks .... really .... high!!!!! Could write trite stuff about how content I am feeling at them moment... but will resist.... I'm off to find Jake for a coffee, Josh is around at the moment and I'm being calm about the flat and tomorrow I will go in search of a veggie sundy lunch........ ahhhhhhh! Bliss!!

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! lost sense of it all and now it's all pink!! Computer crashed and not saving stuff......... will see if this is saved?

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had letter confirming job! oh joy all summer outside!!!

and I sooooooooooooooo miss being in London! It's like being sentenced to spend time in solitary confinement....yes watching good quality films is a pleasant way to spend time and yes I have tons of DIY to do but I miss all the social contact that London was starting to offer... have ended up organising an internet date again ... though not with anyone in Cambridge .... this chappie lives in Brixton!! so will choose one of my favourite bars in Hoxton and try to kid myself that I have only left London temporarily... that I will be back!

oh yes ... about the blog search directory thingy in the left column ... they sent me an email asking if I wanted to be in their listings.. so of course I have added Delilah... had a quick look at it and couldn't resist the temptation to vote for my own blog!! So Delilah has one vote now and I'm wondering if this self publicity will work to the extent that I could vote myself into their top ten... hmmmmmm this certainly is proof that I have too much time!!! anyway if you too have a moment to spare and you are one of the many regular (but quiet) readers of Delilah, howabout you have a look at the site too.. and if you have a blog there howabout an exchange of votes??? a sort of blogging back-scratching thing.....?

Monday morning. back shuffling papers around on my desk... makes me look busy! So looking forward to getting out of here and doing something entirely different... will March the 21st ever get here?

Watched a couple of good films this weekend... had a very solitary time, but as both Josh and Jake are returning from Plymouth today I tried to relish the silence and peace and tidiness!! Knowing full well that by about thursday I will have turned into a nagging haridan! Why is it they really haven't developed the ability to place used crockery inside the dishwasher rather than relying on osmosis to make plates etc pass through the semi-permeable membrane that is the kitchen surface and the top of the dishwasher??? I struggle to understand?? see I'm getting worked up about it already and they are not even back yet!!!

so the films watched were Goodbye Lenin and Cinema Paradiso

I actually got Goodbye Lenin out on friday but ended up watching it saturday morning and found it a delightful study of the changes that occurred to East Germans during the time of unification in 1989... it brought back reminders of all those magazines that my father used to get from the DDR with shiny pictures of smiling Young Pioneers... flag waving, glossy, heroic images that belied the more sombre queing for food and drabness that really defined the era. I visited Leningrad in 1972 and remember thinking it was more like visiting an entirely different decade, as if I was actually time travelling and going back to a more austere post-war period than simply another country... the film, though, also showed that not all the changes were positive and many in East Germany were left with a bitter taste of capitalism. Many of the older people had lost all that they had ever held to be ideologically true and this was the same for my father at that time too. As a longtime member of the communist party in the uk his world-view was shattered by these events..

Major catastrophe!! Half my template disappeared yesterday... this is what Graham from Blogger said about it....

I'm afraid you've fallen victim to a bug in our system which occasionally
loses template data. Your posts are still safe, but unfortunately we were
not able to recover your template for you.

luckily I copied the template last year and managed to find the floppy last night and was therefore able to retrieve most... but very scary, though feel in need of a change and maybe it's time for a few colour changes and stuff.....

otherwise still working at the university... realise the hierarchical nature of the place seems to produce a very unhappy work force...nobody is helpful... they all seem to be focused on maintaining their own positions without a care for anything else... holding some very entrenched views whilst doing this.... was very surprised or should I say shocked when I heard someone comment that they thought three minutes silence for the recent Tsunami victims was a little too long and that one minutes silence was the norm!

Yesterday was a wonderful day........ took the Landrover out for it's final trip with me and we have become very close over the last two weeks....it did handsomely well taking Josh and Hayley plus washing machine back to Devon, and it managed to contain all of my sister's family with J& J and Hayley on a little jaunt around Cambridgeshire in search of zoo's and parks, it is also a cure for depression as on Boxing day after discovering a burnt out shower and no electrics on my return home after a ghastly Christmas I was smiling again by the time I reached B& Q as it was such a pleasure to just drive the beast!

so yesterday found me driving into the deepest darkest fen... it was bleak and fairly windy, the skyscape expansive and dramatic and I had to chug along behind agricultural traffic at a ponderous 30 to 40 mile an hour knowing I could not afford to be late for my interview! Slightly stressful! Plus not really knowing what I had volunteered myself to do. The interview was to consist of an introductory session and would include 'activities'! The letter reassured me that the activities would not require a wetsuit but apart from that it was a bit of an unknown quantity.

I arrived to find an almost empty car park and taking a deep breath walked in to the outdoor centre.... to a friendly greeting and the discovery that I was the first to arrive... the centre is easy to to spot as it has a rather large tent-like appearance to the main building, it's a bit of a miniture Millenium dome like structure ... so I was shown around the centre... the lake is really clear and there is quite a bit of woodland so once there are leaves on the trees it should be quite an attractive site... there is an indoor climbing wall and also a high ropes section which looks like lots of fun... a 35 ft high structure with a high trapeze, minute standing platforms, a free fall bit... looks excellent! all of it is top roped so it's all remarkably safe too!

so the first indication that things had gone well was when Rob asked if I could go on a 4 day archery course, then he mentioned a sailing course, then something about a climbing wall supervisors course... after lunch more details were discussed and i was asked if I could start on 21st March!!!!! So this summer I will be back working in an outdoor centre doing an activity I love!!! Magnificent!!!