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Postcard From Home

With the end of the (financial) year coming up it was time for me take my remaining leave so here I am with a week and half off and not much planned to fill it. The idea is to get up at the same time as for work and not waste too much time on the net. Yesterday was the first day of this regime.

I eventually managed to switch off the bloody computer and get out of doors at 4pm! I went to WH Smith on Oxford Street to redeem a voucher I had been given. For sometime I have been hearing reports on Radio4 that this, one of the oldest brands the UK, is having financial difficulties due to poor sales. Well, no wonder they are going under. A friend of mine tells me that this is because they do not really know what sort of shop they are (bookshop, music shop, news agent, none of the above?) but I do not think this is the problem; after all Boots are similarly trying to confuse their customers with a mish mash of food, medications, beauty products and photo lab and are reasonably successful. No WH Smith is just a horrible place!!! Dreary, lackluster, uninspiring and so creepily parochial!!! They have nothing of any interest for sale. Not even the latest releases of commercial brain washing so-called culture. The brand is old and so is its stock. I eventually managed to find Nick Cave's Best of and the soundtrack for Amelie (not really my first choices but marginally better than the rest)...

I then decided sooth my erked sense of harmony by a trip to a museum. Wednesday means late opening at the National Gallery, so I went to see the new John Virtue exhibition. His paintings are monumental landscape of the Central London river banks in black and white. He biggest inspirations are Turner and Constable. The Turner references are quite obvious. I am not sure I liked what I saw. I am certainly attracted by his style and there are lovely little vignettes within some of the paintings but on the whole I don't think the paintings work (apart from one perhaps which really draw you in). The film attached to the exhibition is reasonably interesting.

Today I was planning on (finally) going back to the gym (the last time I went was in June last year!!!). Early. But I fell asleep late last night and did not make it. Tomorrow perhaps... The plan today is to go to the Cumming Museum this afternoon. is me local....
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