Another Day,

I will only be making one post,

as soon as I have finished this post I will be off to visit Duncan at the nursing home where he lives, back to Tuesday, in the back garden a sharp overnight frost greeted the dawn,

outside the car with its overcoat of ice, 

water in the drain turned to ice,

for a couple of days a team has been busy installing these post, in an attempt to win back the grass verges,

before the park reopening after millions being spent it, all of the grass verges had a show of spring flowers, but with Lewisham council now charging up to £33.50 a day to park, car owners now park on the verges, result? mud and no flowers in the spring, I just hope someone replants the bulbs that over the past few years have been destroyed by thoughtless parkers,

it was a cold hazy cloudy day,

walking towards the bus stop, no sign of the ice melting, 

in the distance no signs of the traffic lights working,

sure enough they were not working, the strange thing was that there were no queues of traffic,

on to the number 54 bus, alighting at This 'N' That which today was closed, 

over the road to drop of some printing and have a chat with Graham, I also picked up my RO water before crossing the road to the post office, letters posted and I was on my way home, where shortly after arriving one of the building companies that are putting in tenders for repairs to the building we live in, needed access to the roof, which is through our attic, it saves using huge ladders and is so much safer, inspection carried out and he was on his way, as Diana was on early shift she returned home in the afternoon, so we watched a few quiz shows, after our evening meal it was feet up for a film,

and what a charming treat it was too, The Duke, a wonderful true story of how a old aged pensioner stole Goya’s painting of the Duke of Wellington from The National Gallery in 1961. The National Archives holds the original documents which tell this incredible story, in this blog post I’m going to highlight some of these, it took four years for the painting to be recovered, and the man who was tried for this crime was a 61-year-old pensioner from Newcastle named Kempton Bunton, He was self-taught, with aspirations as a writer, and had a burning sense of social justice. Bunton had engaged in a long campaign for pensioners and war widows to receive free television licenses. He had served a day in prison for refusing to pay a fine for operating his TV set without a license, the suspect remained elusive until (in July 1965) Bunton walked into Scotland Yard and confessed to the crime. In a statement, he declared himself ‘sick and tired of the whole affair’, for the full amazing story have a look here, I should also mention in the film the painting makes a cameo appearance, “The names Bond, James Bond” what a truly delightful film, with an unexpected twist at the end, after which we watched 2 episodes on ITVX of Lewis, what a great free site, also the same site The Duke was on, after which as Diana has another early start, we were off to bed.