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Harald worked very hard today. The ghastly sticky stuff that held the equally awful black carpet onto the floor of the glass room proved impossible to shift. He decided the only way to get rid of it was to turn all the floor upside down. So, painstakingly, he started flipping the floor boards over.
The cleaner boards in the photo above have been flipped and the white strips are the remains of the ghastly glue.
While he laboured away, I busied myself around the house, happy that Mirinda had FINALLY finished her essay and could now concentrate on getting rid of the cold I gave her.
One of the jobs I managed was to shorten the network cable I connected to her study ages ago. I had left a lot of extra length when I installed it in order to allow for the big mirror and, while it had been removed, I could fix it up properly.
So, armed with my trusty crimping tool, screwdrivers and pliers, I shorted the cable by about 300 metres. It looks a lot better now. As does the ‘feature wall’ in the glass room now that Harald has finished painting it.
Of course, while that was all very exciting, the biggest thing to happen today was the first session of an art course I have enrolled in.
The course is over the next six weeks every Wednesday evening and concerns art of the 19th century with a focus on the National Gallery in London. Tonight was the introductory lecture, encapsulating the features of the course going forwards. It was a most excellent two hours.
The lecturer was Dr Amy Mechowski who, I have to say, was brilliant. An excellent public speaker with a very easy to listen to style. She is also, most importantly, extremely knowledgeable when it comes to art history. She is going to be an absolute joy to learn from over the next few weeks.
We also had a lecture about the beginnings of the National Gallery given by Dr Susanna Avery-Quash. She is an expert on the National and a total fan girl for the first director, Sir Charles Lock Eastlake. She is also an expert on 19th century art which was perfect given the context of the module.
Her lecture was an enlightening hour, learning about the struggles to actually create a national art gallery and ‘allowing’ the common people the opportunity to see and enjoy the world of painting and sculpture. She really knows her stuff.
Included in the photo above is Ann Fay who works at the National Gallery as the Public Programmes Manager. She has the most delightful lilting Irish accent and introduced us to the two speakers.
So, overall, it was an excellent beginning to a course I have very much been looking forward to. I am sure, as we dive deeper into the art of the 19th century, I will be learning a lot of arty stuff and discovering why the period from around 1789 to 1919 was so important. It’s not called the ‘long century’ for nothing.
