Day Off Week 37 2025

This week was a bit different as my wife, Eleri, has a new regime where she doesn't usually work on Tuesdays and so the first half of the day I was with her. We drove over to Highgate but were unable to park there at first and so we went to Kenwood House for a cuppa and them went to see the current art exhibition called double vision. Kenwood has a Vermeer, the Guitar Player. It turns out there is a copy of this in Philadelphia and they are currently showing the two together. Quite interesting. In Highgate later we had a little look at the shops and I left a pile of books at Oxfam, which I was also able to do last week in West Hampstead. The rest of the day was mopstly reading (a book on Landscapes, a short biography of James Brindley, a travelogue by Shackleton, a book on the Irish famine and a little book onanger byRichard Baxter) and TV and some episodes of the Likely Lads. Good day.

Singer Sargent Exhibition

Nearby Kenwood House has a special exhibition on at the moment, so we went with my visiting son and his wifeyesterday. The small exhibition is made up almost exclusively of portraits. These are all the work of John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) who died a hundred years ago this year. Apparently, between 1870 and 1914, 102 American women married into the British aristocracy. Often dubbed "dollar princesses" these women, typically heiresses from wealthy American families, exchanged their fortunes for titles and social status within the British upper class. I recognised many of the names of the featured individuals, sometimes married more than once - Astor, Chamberlain, Colgate, Curzon, Playfair, Vanderbilt, etc. These portraits - many in charcoal but some full oils - have been pulled in from all over (Boston, Dublin, Houston, Washingtn, etc) and it is a rare treat to see so many gathered together like this. The exhibition goes on to October 5. (Nice to see the Vermeer, Rembrandt, Gainsborough, etc, again).

Days Off Weeks 6-8 2022

"What's happened to your day off reports?" I hear you ask. Well, the truth is that I have been having plenty of time off over the last three weeks but it has been rather bitty due to circumstances.

Week 6 (February 7-13) we had a German friend, Stefan Beyer, staying with us and so I spent time chatting with him and on two evenings we had guests over. He also led our Wednesday night meeting so I did not need to prepare for that in the same way. On the Wednesday morning, we walked up to and onto Hampstead Heath and then had a look inside Kenwood House. Always good to see those paintings, now including the Suffolk Collection, which if not composed of very good or famous pictures is at least historically interesting.

Then the next week, Week 7 (February 14-20) was pencilled in for my two days of the week off, which were to be spent in Wales. As it turned out the storm meant it was wiser to leave London on the Thursday so it was on that afternoon that Owain and I headed off from Paddington. I can't remember when I was last on a train. When we got to Cardiff we took a train up to Llandaf, where Eleri picked us up. She had been in Aber for the week. We stayed with my middle son. His daughter turned one recently and Owain was 21 so we celebrated those birthdays with a pizza evening at Eleri's sister's on the Friday, after twelve of them played football (not including me) and a gathering at the Emmanuel church on the Saturday morning. In between times, there was time to catch up with family and friends. Great time. Got to see my sister and her husband too as their flight to N Ireland was cancelled. We came home to a blown over front garden fence.

Then this week, Week 8 (Feb 21-27) my Uncle Peter, now 80, flew in from Canada yesterday and so we spent time with him. My sister and I picked him up from Heathrow and we spent a chunk of the day here drinking coffee and chatting. He is my dad's youngest brother, one of only two surviving uncles on either side. His wife sadly died last year. He lives on Vancouver Island.

Day off Week 50

So on with the jeans and t-shirt once again and a walk in mild weather for the season to Kenwood House. Not having the dog with me, I could go into the house and check out the paintings again (Vermeer, Wright, Rembrandt, Gainsborough, etc). There were few people about and each house had at least one guide desperate to tell me stuff. Nice. I had a coffeee there and read the paper. In Golders Green I bought some coat hooks and back here I put them on the back of a bedroom door. Lots of reading. I finished a new translation of Aladdin which I enjoyed and read more of Christmas Carol (finished today) Pinocchio and a neglected book (still not quite finished Seven Types of Atheism.) In the evening we watched the final parts of two series. Mrs Wilson was okay. It is amazing what people are willing to share about their family background. If Mr Wilson was my grandfather I might want to keep it quiet. Blood turned out to be something different to what you might have thought and is really a rather poor attempt to normalise adultery, homosexuality, suicide, euthanasia, etc. Unimpressed.

10 London Art Galleries

1. National Gallery, Trafalgar Square
2. Tate Britain, Millbank
3. Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly
4. Wallace Collection, Manchester Square
5. Courtauld Gallery, Somerset House
6. Dulwich Picture Gallery, Dulwich
7. Tate Modern, Bankside
8. Kenwood House, Hampstead
9. Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace
10. Guildhall Gallery, City of London

Kenwood in November

Beautiful Autumn day up in Kenwood yesterday. I happened to be listening to Bach on my i-pod as I took in the view.

Updating you

Last Wednesday we had a visit from a friend I met in The Philippines. Joel or Jose Reuel had come over to be best man to his friend Reddy at the wedding to Naomi Clarke in Kent the other week. He had also spent time in Suffolk and in Southampton before spending his final night here in Childs Hill. I briefly interviewed him at the Wednesday night meeting about the floods and how he came to faith as a 15 year old. His mother is in the Cubao church but his father is a bishop in a Filipino cult. Joel is a deacon in the church and hopes to begin studies at the Grace Ministerial Academy next June.
On the Thursday we went up to see Kenwood House and then in the evening I took him to Heathrow. It was nice to meet Mr Clarke and one of his daughters briefly when they dropped in with Joel's case.

Friday was busy day in the study and speaking at the clubs (on the widow of Nain) restarting after half term. The younger one were making key hooks and we had some Madlib fun in the older club.

On Saturday we headed for Wales where we dropped in on Eleri's brother-in-law and family as it is Glyn's fortieth this week. Eleri's other sister and family were also there en route to Aberystwyth. It was Osian's second birthday (already!) the other day. We came back over the old bridge - the novelty is beginning to wear off. We were not back too late.

Remembrance Sunday went off okay with the two minute silence and lunch after church. I preached on Jesus words against the teachers of the law in Mark 12 and the end of Romans 3. The morning congregation was quite large for us. The evening congregation was not large. People were slow to leave, which is nice.

Cuyp Dordrecht

I was in Kenwood House today and noticed this painting, which hasn't grabbed my attention before. A view of Dordrecht by Aelbert Cuyp (1620-1691) was painted some years after the famous Synod of 1618 in about 1652.

Suffolk Collection

I'm always meaning to get up to nearby Kenwood House and today for once I managed it. I had a nice little walk in the winter sunshine and popped into the house to see the portraits on show from the Suffolk Collection. These include full-length Jacobean portraits by William Larkin and royal Stuart images by Van Dyck and Lely. Also had a cuppa and a read. Cold but okay in the sunshine.

Getting back to it

So this week has been mainly getting back into things. Some of the congregation are still away but some are back and some never left town. The main task has been working on my messages for Wednesday and Sunday, trying to get the notices and newsletter written and thinking about how things are going to shape up over the next few months. We were a very small number at the Midweek Meeting. I've put the message here.

Some things have been different though. Rhodri is in the midst of moving out so I've been helping there a little. On Tuesday evening Eleri and I celebrated our anniversary with a meal out at Pizza Express in Golders Green then watched a DVD, Sandra Bullock in Premonition - not a film I might have seen normally. Billed as a thriller it was in fact an interesting exploration of predestination and free will. Mildly Calvinistic in its theology it sought to deal with the problem by urging kindliness and love - there are worse messages out there! (A review I found says "No, this is not a great movie, but it is a well-produced little mystery that asks the audience to engage both mind and imagination, and that is a good thing!"). See trailer here.

I spent most of Wednesday in the Evangelical Library sitting in with a regular volunteer in the Librarian's absence. It was a very quiet day - only 4 or 5 in - and Miss H did most of what work needed to be done. I concentrated on reading (I'm still busy with Machen reading for next week's lectures I'm attending) and then had a little explore. I wanted something on the session of Christ. I found something by the 19th Century Presbyterian W S Plumer but not much (see here). There doesn't seem to be much on it about. I also noticed that the works of Schaeffer associate Hans Rookmaaker are now available in six fat volumes (have been since 2002 - I've been asleep!). They retail at £100 but you can get them on CD-rom for £24. I borrowed one volume to have a little look. I started with the interviews. There is one there with the interestingly named Marc De Klein (say it quickly and it may make you smile!). Being at the Library in that way was a good exercise for me as Chairman of the EL Board. One thing that impressed me was just how diverse our membership is (ethnically and otherwise). I'd not really realised that.

On Thursday the rest of the family were out most of the day visiting friends so I grabbed the chance to pop up to Kenwood House - something I'd wanted to do last week but hadn't got the chance to. It's only a short bus ride away. There were remarkably few people there (I'm sure I spotted a disproportionately high number of pregnant women). I spent a while in the gardens and especially in the house where they have quite an outstanding collection of (mostly 18th Century) stuff - Gainsborough, Reynolds, etc. I spotted a Richard Wilson I'd not seen before (the interest there is a Welshman painting a London scene). I had another long look at the Vermeer. The guitar player is not my favourite of his 36 extant paintings but it's growing on me. The Joseph Wright of Derby piece (Dressing the kitten) was out on loan as ever. Shame. They had two there by Guardi - not a name I knew. A Venetian, he is similar in style to the older Canaletto. Anyway, good fun in lovely weather. Every time I go there I resolve to go more often. Hope I do this time.