THE GENTLE ARTS

Charles and  Camilla visited Dickens House Museum on Tuesday,

for Charles Dickens' 200th Birthday

Here they are in the same room as the clock I wound up (see previous post).

They are looking at a first edition of a Charles Dickens book.

You know how I love an Art Gallery:

Last night Kate made her first solo Royal Engagement at the

Lucien Freud Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.

Kate is their new Patron.

Doesn't she look poised, and completely at home in her new role!

Over in Frankfurt, Princess Mette-Marit of Norway opened an exhibition of paintings by

the great Norwegian artist Edvard "The Scream" Munch!

I bought these as long-stemmed roses on Monday,

but what with the heat and humidity by Wednesday they were hanging their little heads.

Solution:  cut them off and float them.  They seem a little happier now and at least one is opening up.

Here is our tiniest rosebush - a little mini about 10 cm. high.

It works away and produces a bloom now and again.

Bye now ..

WHAT THE DICKENS

Source: Google Images

"Barkis is Willin'"

"Please Sir, I want some more"

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

Today is Charles Dickens' 200th Birthday,

and the above quotes are regularly tossed about between the Red Cardinals to amuse ourselves.

Our front door knocker is Marley's Ghost (A Christmas Carol)

We found it at the Dickens House Museum in London in 2004.

The museum is located in his former London home:

 

Something of a Dickens Tragic,

 I was thrilled to be asked to assist in the weekly winding of Dickens old Grandfather clock:

This is moi, actually touching a key

that was touched by the great man himself!

A pretty mug was bought at the gift shop,

picturing young David Copperfield when he meets his

Aunt Betsy Trotwood

in Dover, having walked all the way from London.

Dickens' garden, tucked into a tiny space at the back of the London home.

Did he plant that pink rose? or the ivy on the wall?

Happy Birthday Mr Dickens,

and thank you for the hours of happy reading,

the quotable quotes, the weird and eccentric characters,

and the commentaries on the human condition,

you so generously left to us all!