Postcards To Chris

The January doldrums. We’ve mainly been making marmalade and watching TV. So this week’s postcard is in honour of Homeland, which is helping to pass the long hours until Game of Thrones returns.

When I visited Leeds Castle, many Januaries ago, we got lost in the maze and missed the last bus back to the station.

Caption:
Leeds Castle, Maidstone, Kent
The Maze designed by Adrian Fisher

This brilliant image expresses the circadian confusion of my jet lag.

Caption:
M.C. Escher ® (1898-1972) / Day and Night, 1938 / Woodcut / © 1938 M.C. Escher Foundation-Baarn-Holland / All rights reserved

Last week we celebrated the festive season at the Dovetail Belgian bar in Clerkenwell with heaps of roast potatoes washed down with lashings of Chimay.

Caption:
Alfons Mucha: Bières de la Meuse, c. 1897
Peissenberg, Artothek

This week’s postcard metaphor: Little Man Pee pisses on Brussels.

Caption:
BRUXELLES: Manneken Pis
BRUSSEL: Manneken Pis
BRUSSELS: Manneken Pis

We were on the South Bank this weekend, searching for Christmas presents.

Caption:
THORNBACK & PEEL
STUDIO W11
COCKPIT ARTS
COCKPIT YARD
NORTHINGTON ST
LONDON. WC1N 2NP
020 72427478

It’s been a damp and dreary week. I love this photo - never has damp and dreary looked so good. It reminds me of a poem in an anthology I had when I was little:
I like the town on rainy nights
When everything is wet -
When all the town has magic lights
And streets of shining jet!

Caption:
Exposition: New York et l’Art moderne, Alfred Stieglitz et son cercle, 1905-1930
Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Octobre 2004-Janvier 2005.

EDWARD J. STEICHEN (1879-1973)
The Flat Iron, 1904
Épreuve à la gomme bichromatée bleu-vert sur papier préparé au palladium / 25,2 x 32,1 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
© Photo The Metropolitan Museum of Art
© Permission of Joanna T. Steichen / Carousel, 2004
© R.M.N., Paris 2004

Happy Halloween! I don’t really like Halloween, but I have nonetheless made a jack o’lantern out of an orange and am wearing an unsightly pair of novelty socks with a spider-web motif.

Caption:
03-B11106 / Edvard Munch, 1863-1944
Geschrei (The Scream) (1895)
lithograph, .483 x .388 m (19 x 15 1/4 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Rosenwald Collection 1943.3.9038
© NGA

I wish I could say I’d chosen this postcard because I spent the last week building a model of the Clayton Estate out of wine corks. However, it’s actually because I took the unprecedented step of entering a travel-writing competition, and I wrote about West Cornwall - particularly the joy of sitting in the late afternoon sun with a view of St Michael’s Mount and a pint of Doom Bar.

Caption:
The Cork Castle - a model made out of
champagne corks in the 1930’s.
by the butler, Henry Lee.

We held a housewarming this weekend, and showed off notre chambres.

Caption:
Van Gogh Vincent
1853 - 1890
La chambre de Van Gogh à Arles, 1889
Huile sur toile
0,575 x 0,740
Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Walking through the City, we stopped at One New Change to take a glass elevator to the roof terrace for a view of St Paul’s.

I found this postcard in my postcard stash, which prompted me to google “St Paul’s geometrical staircase”, and now I’m planning to visit the Perspectives installation in the southwest tower. The usual sightseeing > postcard trajectory has been reversed!

Caption:
St Paul’s Cathedral
The Geometrical Staircase
© Sampson Lloyd