Chelsea, Shakespeare, Sculpture and Culture...

As it was the final week of The Brighton Festival, I was packing loads in...including an actor friend in my front room, as I was being his 'theatrical landlady' whilst he performed in Shakespeare's Globe's, wonderful touring production of 'Comedy of Errors'. I have experienced many very peculiar and uncomfortable theatrical 'digs' and landladies in my time, so enjoyed looking after a worn out actor in his production week, where working hours are often 10am till 10pm!

Other incidents this week included:

An audition for an Ikea commercial, for a store opening in Dublin...

and then my child was sick, and for the first time ever, I had to cancel the meeting, as I couldn't get cover 'till midday.

That afternoon I had a ticket for Chelsea, which my mother had arranged months ago...and then she was sick!!!

So...I met a friend there, we had an extended free lunch at the Loch Fynne restraunt, looking out onto numerous horticulteral delights...and then realised, amidst our gastronomic delights that we'd got hardly any time left to look around the show! So, we saw James May's plastecine garden, which we thought was awful... but then we indulged ourselves in the Pavillion, surrounded by masses of flowers, and agreed that this was indeed what we had both expected of Chelsea!

I loved the amazing dahlias...

and we both discovered auriculas, and fell in love with their weirdness...

And I also loved this sculpture by Hamish Mackie ; two otters swimming after a salmon...it was really, really beautiful, especially to an otter-lover, like me...

Another venture was going up to the Anish Kapoor C-Curve sculpture on top of the Downs, early one evening, and it was absolutely fantastic; a fabulous blending of modern art and beautiful, traditional countryside...one magically enhancing the other...

reading mirror writing...

It made me feel so happy inside, and I love it when art manages to change my emotions.

When I saw the Rachel Whitread exhibition at the Tate Modern a few years ago, it also made me feel incredibly light and blissful, and I remember feeling like I was on an MGM set, where they'd been filming a heaven scene...

At the end of the week, I'd also managed to squeeze in a Private View, a BrightonFrocks fashion show (with a great goodie-bag under my chair), an after-show party at the Dome (courtesy of my lodger!), seeing a performance of 'Comedy of Errors' (also courtesy of my lodger), a Sunday breakfast, a Sunday Roast, and a raucous end of Festival party at a very accomodating Open House...

I had a brilliant week ...courtesy of fantastic friends, family and weather.

And so finally...a brief dose of industrial oddness:

A beautiful pylon...

and a mysterious tumble-dryer/burning happening in a neighbouring street...no-one was about, all doors were closed, and so this lonely appliance quietly burnt to death...