A London February

Yes, a whole month in London, in the depths of Winter... but towards the end of this long time of rainy and near freezing  tribulation  the lovely gardens of Notting Hill and Holland Park began to express that they too had had enough, and started coming alive with the exotic splendour of magnolias and other very flamboyant, and to me rather un-English floral signs  of the arrival of spring...

but until those last days, I spent my days on my hands and knees in the prosaic surroundings of my hired,  un-heated studio space  on a North Acton Industrial Estate

painting the floorcloth for the Richmond Georgian House, which will be installed towards the autumn. This was the only time available for me to do this work, since now, with the arrival of spring, my little airBnb will begin to fill up again and from now onwards till end October Siena is the place to be!

I was often assisted by Iarla, my friend Kathy's son (who, by the way, chose to be Tarzan for my big spring party last March) and it was the second time he helped me to work on a floorcloth, the last being the one I made several years ago for Auckland Castle.

The best time of the day was when we finished the cold day's work and walked down to the lovely haven which was a little Lebanese workman's caff, where the friendly Ali and his nephew made us hot falaffels and there was always a lovely home made lentil soup which one could help oneself to

                                                                                 

 After a month of marbling and painting of border cornucopia to match the splendid wall decorations in the room our the work was finally rolled up and taken away for storage.

There was of course also some time at night to catch up with some of my London friends, and I spent the first couple of weeks at Sanjay's lovely Parson's Green flat before moving to Andrew's Portobello Road pad and then finally I caught up once more with Les and Pat again in the lovely Ladbroke Grove flat they now stay in when they spend time in London. 

All in all a successful but really demanding and exhausting month in London, while my friends Ed and Erika manned the fort in Siena. They left this morning and I am now alone, and about to fix a Campari Spitz to fortify myself to delve into the worrying Middle East news via CNN, France 24 and Al Jazeera...