So, the journey south was shall we say 'interesting', we woke as you already know to my much wished for snow, on the only day of the year we didn't actually want it! The first part of the drive was a little 'hairy', in places the effect of the falling snow and that which was drifting off the fields and hills in the wind was of whiteout, one moment we were driving in reasonable visibility and the next it was impossible to see anything at all.....but it was beautiful, the drifts has formed themselves in the wind into wonderful eight foot high, round white sculptures, with clouds of ethereal white snow dust swirling all around them. Now that was something I would have loved to photograph but stopping on the side of the road in such conditions is not advisable!
As we progressed further south the lying snow became less but the falling snow still hampered visibility and so the going was slow, peculiarly just as the forecasters had predicted as we hit the midlands the snow completely disappeared, the sun filtered through the clouds and the road was dry...almost as if one had drawn a line under Birmingham!
And so...eventually, eight hours later we arrived to much celebration and chatter. Not only had we not managed to visit since the summer but also it had been my fathers birthday the previous day so the 'party-ing' had been held over for a day. Only a small celebration, we are not into big events but it was fab and it meant that for the first time in over two years I got to see my brother and his wife and spend an evening catching up with them.
London Eye.
Monday we ventured onto the underground, 'post rush hour' I might add, and headed for the South Bank and the Hayward Gallery to see the Dan Flavin exhibition Now art might be one of my 'obsessions' but I don't profess to understand most of what I see and that is probably the best description of how I felt about this particular set of offerings, I just didn't understand it as it was intended. Another of my little passions is lighting, something I must have inherited I think from my TV lighting employed father and whilst large numbers of multi coloured fluorescent tubes gave off a kind of aesthetically pleasing light I think I was missing something somewhere from what Mr Flavin was trying to say! Hey, but the building is fab!
From the South bank.
Over the river
Onward from fluorescent art via a walk along the South bank in the wind and much coffee, we decided next to visit the London Imax cinema for an African Safari....wow, I have to say this genre of cinematic technology had never really appealed to me but it was really something else. If you have ever viewed a 3D imax production you will know exactly what I mean and if you haven't you really ought too, just once. It is phenomenal and so realistic that if one snuck a look at one's fellow cinema goers it was apparent that it had the same effect on everyone....all around kept 'poking' a finger into mid air...because it really appeared that what we were looking at was literally just a few inches from our faces and not yards away on a screen. To begin with it was actually a little disconcerting but it quickly became just completely absorbing. Really worth a visit if you have never been to one before....oh and of course there is popcorn!
London Imax.
The remainder of our two days were in the main taken up with optimizing the opportunity for retail therapy, something not easily available at home, and the evenings were spent happily eating and drinking copious amounts of good food and wine (my self excluded of course from the wine, yes, really I'm tee total) and catching up with six months chatter and gossip!
The day we returned back to Scotland...it snowed again, how typical...but thank fully nothing significant, we stopped off at my sisters in the Midlands en-route and spent a few hours of fun with her and my nieces, and then it was onward in the wee small hours back to Scotland and two very boisterous, waiting cats!
Only four days I know but a lovely fours days spent with my parents, in the bosom of my family, chilled out....hell, it seemed like only a few hours by the time we got back!
