The City in Fog

This morning required military timings to get organised and be at the station in time for my 9.30am train to London. While I was out Xena was being collected by P the dogwalker, and I had to leave her shower caddy and towel all ready for when he dropped her off again as I knew she would be too muddy to come into the house until he had showered her off, which he kindly agreed to do. So I left a key out for him, and I also had to make sure the lighting engineer could get access to the key as he was coming to reprogram the lighting today.

I was on the train when P texted me to say the gate wasn't working properly, it would not close. So the house had an open gate, the key was left out and the alarm was not on - not great security! Anyway all went well with Xena going out with P and getting dropped much later and washed before entering the house.

The lighting engineer managed to reprogram some of the lighting so that I finally have some lights in the main bedroom and bathroom (yay, no candles tonight!) - he redirected the circuits from rooms we are not needing to the ones we are needing. He reported back that the management of Lutron, the lighting system we have in the house, were shocked that we have three failed circuit boards, something that has not happened before and they are concerned that there is some underlying problem that has caused this and they are concerned that if they replace the circuit boards, at a cost (their cost) of around £1000 each, they may blow again. At the same time they understand we cannot have no lighting for 20 weeks while waiting to get the units, so they have hinted to the lighting engineer that they may try and get some from another order - one where they are going in to a new building that is still being built and so are not needed just yet - so we have fingers crossed that this can be done, we will know in the next few days or so.

I was in London to go with a friend to the Cezanne exhibition at the Tate Modern. There was a lecture prior to the entry of the exhibition by an accomplished art historian, which was fascinating. She shows slides of each work of art and discusses them, which is very interesting but for me it takes away the wow factor of seeing the work of art for the first time as you enter the exhibition hall. Cezanne was a very slow but rather prolific artist - he could take 2 years to finish a single work of art. There were about 85 paintings on exhibition which is not even half his collection. He also painted without regard for perspective or gravity, mainly in his still life works, where apples sit precariously on the edge of a table and don't seem to roll off, and tables appear wider in the distance than in the foreground which is opposite to how we see it in real life. 

After the exhibition my friend and I went for a late lunch at a Middle Eastern restaurant near Borough Market - the food was delicious. It was a great day out but to be honest with all the issues going on at the house and being worried about people coming and going and the broken gate I could not really relax and enjoy myself. When I got home I swept under the gate and it is now working, I think there must have been a tiny pebble stopping it from closing.

I did not have much chance for photos as I was with my friend but London was very dull, grey and foggy today, as can be seen here - taken on my walk from Waterloo Station along the south bank to the Tate Modern museum.