Another Sunday,

that Diana was asked if she could go into work due to staff shortages,

I mentioned that I might walk to the mansion for the Sunday food and craft fair, but looking outside the rain put paid to that,

in the afternoon Diana arrived home, so time for a sherry and a read,

tempera prawns and spring rolls for our starter,

'Cheers!',

onto our main course, roast pork, with gravy for Diana,

sans gravy for myself,

eyes down and tuck in,

we rounded off our meal with apple pie and ice cream,

a final 'Cheers', we listened to music for some time, before our two evening films, firstly,

Morbius, a great take on vampire movies, a doctor bankrolled by a friend tries to find a cure for a blood disorder they both suffer from, and as you might guess a cure is found, but with unforeseen side effects, then the fun begins!

and then how about this for a coincidence, only yesterday I mentioned the fairies at the bottom of the garden, then this evening on one of the cable channels screened FairyTale: A True Story, featuring the Cottingley Fairies, who Sir Arthur Conan Doyle thought were real and put his name to the 1920's great fairy hoax, the Cottingley Fairies, a wonderful film, but first the film reminded me so much of one of the greatest fairy artists of all time Richard Dadd, (1819-1887) who is recognised as one of the most individual of English painters, the story of his sad life is now quite familiar: he was born in Chatham in Kent, after routine art training at the Royal Academy Schools he entered upon his career as an artist in the circle of painters known as The Clique, in the years 1842-43 he travelled to the Middle East and Greece with Sir Thomas Phillips, on his return from this trip he suffered a bout of insanity in the course of which he murdered his father, (he cut his throat with a cut throat razor), for the rest of his life Dadd was confined in the asylums of Bethlem and Broadmoor, in which latter place he died in 1887, I have know of him as for some time he was in a hospital in Beckenham where I have lived and worked in my tropical fish shop, and have visited the hospital there, (not as a patient, my mother worked in the pathology lab there) called the Bethlehem Royal Hospital which was originally called Bedlam and is where the Imperial War Museum in London Stands today, it was at one time on the site of Liverpool Street Station, 

above is the most famous of Dadd's works and is considered by many to be Dadd's master piece is The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke, in The Tate, and why do I know all of this? because Richard Dadd is one of my favourite artists, but back to the film, it was a charming fantasy film, released in 1997, there were so many familiar faces in the film, a delight to watch, and with that we were off to bed.