More artwork by Kassie

Here is the latest work by our budding young artist: a study of two friends in pastels. Note the small objects around the perimeter of the piece, meant to convey the hobbies of the subjects: Megan, the tall equestrian, and Sophie, another promising artist.



To see more of Kassie's artwork, click here.

Flower power

Last week I attended the Summer of Love art exhibition at the Tate Liverpool, which showcases a vast collection of posters, album covers, books, magazines, paintings, photographs and other multimedia centred on and around the psychedelic period of the 1960s and early 1970s. I found the album covers and posters to be the most interesting, definitely inspiration for my own design projects. Also worthy of note is Janis Joplin's 1965 Porsche cabriolet, custom-painted in colourful hues featuring images of flowers, butterflies, and a bloodied American flag.

The exhibition runs from 27 May to 25 September.

More travels

In May we made two excursions you're more than welcome to read about at our Travels in the UK website: to Sudbury Hall and the Museum of Childhood in Derbyshire and to nearby Biddulph Grange Garden and its "gardens within a garden", the perfect landscape to capture the imagination of young and old alike.

Re-reading Rebecca

A few weeks ago I picked up Sally Beauman's Rebecca's Tale and put it down again in order to re-read the novel that inspired it, Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca. Both novels begin with the same sentence: "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." Fitting, I think, since I believe Manderley, in the latter novel at least, the true protoganist. Certainly neither the knock-kneed unnamed narrator nor the chameleonic lady of the manor, Rebecca de Winter, inspires admiration. The towering rhododendrons and fragrant azaleas, the lush, overgrown wood encroaching on the drive, and the deceptively placid sea, are much more appealing and evocative.

Half-term birthday

It's half-term break yet again in the West Midlands. Kassie is on to her second week and enjoying every minute of it: tripping down to London (check out below one of the seahorses we met at the London Zoo on the weekend), playing with friends, visiting the park, eating lunch out, even showing Mummy up at swim class. Kassie turned eight yesterday and thinks it only right and proper that she not attend school on her birthday. If we end up returning to Canada, which doesn't give pupils time off during the school year, preferring they store days up for summer, she'll be in for a shock.