Given how often I go to the V&A, it's shocking how rarely I seem to go on the long walk to see the nineteenth century paintings ... passing, en route, Gilbert Scott's Hereford Screen (of which this is only a tiny bit of one pillar), and - goodness knows who, seen from above.
But I was exceptionally delighted to encounter a domestic snail, in Landseer's There's No Place Like Home (1842) (what's the message? Come home SOON because I'm out of food and even the snail can't find any meaty fragments?)
and to find not just a dandelion, but a whole bouquet of biodiverse wildflowers in a cornfield in Richard Burchett's View Across Sandown Bay, Isle of White (c. 1863).
Then, among the excellent Turners, I noted quite how thick the white is on the buildings in his Venice from the Giudecca (1840) - as though he's adding to the mouldings.
Of course I paid a visit to the Beasts - these were the two who at one time stood outside our front door, when we lived in Cumberland.
And then Family - at least those who weren't stuck somewhere in Sussex/Surrey in an overheated car, or who were in Marrakesh, or for that matter New Zealand - so good to see them!
Finally a long walk through Kensington Gardens/Hyde Park - again, such a long time since I've looked at the Statue of Queen Victoria outside Kensington Palace that I'd forgotten that she has a little moat round her - if, indeed, I'd ever noticed ...
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