Chartwell

In my life I have been three times to Chartwell, the Kent home of Winston Churchill. It is about a 30-minute drive from my house. Churchill had bought the house in 1922 for £5,000, much to the disapproval of his wife Clementine who thought it needed a lot of money throwing at it to do it up.  It had eventually been taken on by the National Trust in 1946 and opened to the public. My first visit  was about 40 years ago, when I went with Greg and my parents.  The second time was a few years ago when I went with some friends. The third time was a couple of weeks ago on Kay's birthday. She and her husband Darcy had been having visits to a few places linked with Churchill. They had visited the Cabinet War Rooms in London, then Bletchley Park and now wanted to round it off with visiting Chartwell.

It was a hot sweltering Sunday when we went and the Kent countryside was scorched. The gardens at Chartwell are beautiful with walled gardens and sweeping lawns which were also suffering from the heat. We arrived at midday and went straight into the house. It was an original Tudor house with extensions added on by Clementine. 

The rooms were huge and tastefully decorated, although the kitchen still retained the style of the 1930s and 1940s.  

There is a separate building called The Studio where Churchill painted his masterpieces, no doubt to help him relax from the stress of running a country at war.

The grounds are amazing - sweeping lawns, a small lake, walled gardens full of native cottage garden flowers and roses of every description. Near the studio is a tall pendant lime tree which gave off a very strong perfume from several metres away. 

Suffice to say there were butterflies and bees in their hundreds. 

The views across the wider Kent countryside could be seen inside and outside the house and were very calming.

All in all a good day was had by all, polished off by a celebratory meal in our local posh Italian restaurant. 

ABBA

I am not normally a visitor of theatres or cinemas, because my hearing fails me and I spend two or three hours twiddling my thumbs trying to work out what the actors on stage are saying. However, I do like a musical or concert, because I can hear and appreciate the music. Eighteen months ago for my birthday, Kay promised me tickets to the ABBA Voyage  experience in London. We had only got around to booking tickets recently and this week saw us heading up to East London to see it.

We stopped en route to Canary Wharf  to wander round there

Centre of Canary Wharf area

and ended up eating at a pizzeria before getting the Docklands Light Railway to the delightfully-named Pudding Mill Lane. 

The ABBA venue is adjacent to Pudding Mill Lane station and, once inside, is a complex full of bars selling all manner of drinks and food (which you can take to your seats) as well as shops selling merchandise. The auditorium is huge - this photo does not do it justice -  but was taken high up where we sat with an excellent view of the stage. I have no idea how many thousands were there, but, apart from the seated areas, there was a dance pit near the stage where people were crammed in to dance. It did not however stop us dancing by our seats as many did for the popular songs like Dancing Queen and Mamma Mia. in fact there was not a single person sitting for those.

I expected the show to be good, as ABBA tunes are always catchy, but I had not expected it to be mind-blowing. The use of avatars to make it look like the real ABBA are on stage was very convincing and side panels showed them up close too. There was a live band to one side actually playing the music with a backing singing group of three girls. By far the most mind-blowing was the lighting effects which changed with every song.  It was like nothing else I had been to. 

The photos above were taken as the auditorium was filling up.  Sadly, as the show was about to start,  we were told not to be tempted to use our phones to photograph or video anything, as we would be escorted out of the complex. I would have loved to record a snippet just to show here, but you'll have to go yourselves to see what it is like. The following is the official youtube advert.

Hot and bothered

The weather has been scorching-hot here in London for the last few weeks. Temperatures of over 30C in London are not pleasant. The house bricks seem to retain the heat overnight and I feel like an oven-cooked chicken. The lawns are brown, the plants and trees struggling to cope. Some of the trees look like they are already shedding their autumn leaves and it is only July. It is stifling at night. Even with open windows, the bedroom is airless and sleeping has failed me so many times, I feel like an automaton.

Into this hot-house, I managed to develop a ripe sebaceous cyst on my back. I have had it for 25 years or more and it mainly lies dormant but this is the third time it has erupted. A recent visit to A&E had a surgeon examining me and he decided to drain it under a general anaesthetic, He did not close the would, but left it open to heal from the inside out. This meant I have been having to visit my General Practitioner's nurse to have it cleaned and dressed every two days for the last 3 weeks. I finally got the all-clear a few days ago. The wound has closed and I can keep the plaster off to let the air get at the scar. Apparently they were unable to remove the sac surrounding the cyst, so I face another operation under general anaesthetic in September, once it has calmed down, to remove it completely in the hopes it will never bother me again. This is what the little blighter looked like just before the operation.

Summer concert

I took a break from my weekly Sunday posts last week to see if I got any more comments to my post about Blogland, but suffice to say, nine comments was the sum total (a big thank you to those who did), so back to my weekly post again.

Our recent summer choir concert was a huge success. We'd been building up to it since New Year.  The overall theme of the concert was Earth, Water, Air and Fire, so the songs reflected that theme. Our choir  leader always  chooses challenging pieces and this year was no exception. She chose the 20-minute long medley from Hunchback of Notre Dame as our piece for the second half - lots of Latin, jaunty songs and sad ones all in a mix - all learned off by heart - very challenging at my age! I have tried to include a video of it but am being told the video is too long to insert. So you will have to make do with a photo instead. We had to wear clothes that reflected the colour of earth, water, air and fire - so blues, greens, oranges and beiges - as usually we are in a uniform colour, most often black.

We received the news a few days after, that our choir mistress is stepping down for a year as as she has too many commitments at the moment and needs some time to refresh. She has acquired a temporary replacement for the next year, so that begs the question whether our repertoires will change in some way to be less challenging. Time will tell.