Let's Draw A Veil Over 2016

And  make 2017 the year when everyone is nice to one another . Everyone .  All year long .
                                            
I'll raise a glass to that . Happy New Year !

Having A Day Off

Having spent yesterday afternoon writing cards and finding the tree decorations  , I was all Christmas-ed out this morning .

Though our Keep-Fit trainer did spend today's session singing 'The Snowman '  to encourage us to achieve miracles of balance and bendiness , it failed .  Instead we commandeered all the exercise balls and sat in a circle , eating Kopiko coffee toffees and giggling  about clothes we'd worn in the '60s . Except for the Class Swot , of course , who was lying on a yoga mat doing press-ups ... and giggling ( fortunately not with a toffee in her mouth . It's been a while since any of us has done a First Aid course. ) .
We're all going to have to start behaving like grownups tomorrow  . But until then  ... 

No Eye Candy

Blogger or Google-thing or whoever now runs the world seems to have decided that I can't upload any more photos here .
So you'll just have to imagine what Groningen looked like last Saturday ... twinkly .
And rather busy . And full of large people carrying huge parcels . And crowded with people cycling past with Christmas trees . Those of us who are neither agrophobic or claustrophobic had a lovely time .
In fact it was so nice , I'm going to Den Haag on Saturday to Christmas shop there .
Not that I'm having much luck actually finding anything suitable . There was in fact a moment last night , when I wondered if it wouldn't just be O.K. to send everybody a Playmobil airplane via Amazon ... 

But now I've bought some lovely gift tags and it would be a shame not to use them

Fleeing From Reality...

                                                




This grumpy teenager ,

born just up the road and destined to become a solicitor like his father , provided the perfect escape last Wednesday morning after the shock of Trump's election win .

The Fries Museum  currently has a large Alma-Tadema exhibition , showing a lot of privately owned treasures . His huge canvases full of rose petals and mosaics ,

draperies and marble , breastplates and togas proved to be just the distraction needed  .

First thing in the morning there was plenty of room to admire his attention to detail

... later on it became busier and I could sink gracefully on a bench and watch excerpts from the many films which should have listed him in the credits as set designer .

A couple of school groups swooped about with their work-sheets , the boys impressed by the swords and the girls by this slice of Roman high life where lolling about was a virtue . Later, they would go into a side-room where they could all dress up in togas and swirl capes and weapons to their hearts content .

We instead , just tottered off and sank into a cafe corner over coffees and  tried to understand what's happening this year ... 

But I'm going to have to go back again to pay proper attention to Alma-Tadema's family portraits . His real talent lay in his portrayal of faces , whether  of a childhood friend

his daughters or this little boy ,

waiting while his mother talked to a friend she'd met in the street .

Golden Oldies ...

I've just spent the afternoon singing along with the Shadows , Elvis and an Indonesian band .
The band members were all on the elderly side ... the drummer tended to nod off between numbers , which might be why he'd been carefully positioned in the corner  ... but then so was the audience .

We all had a lovely time , ate all the biscuits and danced when the mood took us . Those of us , who remembered how to , hand jived and one totally round woman insisted on being hauled to her feet to demonstrate Hawaian dancing at regular intervals , collapsing back into her wheelchair each time after a couple of seconds , beaming .

No , don't worry , I was a visitor , not having got to care home age which here is usually 80+ , but if every Sunday afternoon were to be like this , it wouldn't be too bad ...the biscuits would have to be better , though . 

And who will we all be singing along to by then ? The Animals ?

Transported ... To The Wrong Film Entirely

Temporarily bike-less and carrying a far too heavy ruck-sack , there I am , wandering down the street , humming the Dr. Who music and wishing I hadn't taken quite so many books out of the library  , since I can only read them one at a time anyway , when something caught my eye .

A new plaque on the corner ... and there I was face to face with an Oscar winner , Richard Hageman , who got it for the music for  "Stagecoach"  .

Altogether carried away by this unexpected  brush with fame on a wet Thursday afternoon  , I swapped my Tardis for a dash through the Badlands .

And only realised when I got home that , actually , I was humming Annie Oakley's " Whip , Crack Away "  instead . Did John Wayne and Doris Day ever share a screen ?

The Fourth Dimension ... Or Something

I'd run out of crosswords . ( I have a subscription to the Times puzzle page and tend to print them out in batches , rather than one a day . Henry Ford has nothing on me . I've streamlined the whole process . )   So ; coffee , laptop and printer ... 

Only now I've  got Windows 10 and Windows 10 refused to co-operate with the printer . It seemed that I had to formally introduce them . Well , at least one of us must be socially challenged because it took all morning .

Never mind , in between all the faffing about wailing , I also managed to cook a pot of  pork and beans , clean the kitchen windows and swear a lot . I've now got a big pile of crosswords , enough for weeks , which is just as well because I'm worn out ...

These ads have been going up all over the place  , any suggestion of a connection to a certain Windows programme is pure conjecture .