Decorative and Antiques Fair Battersea

Attending the Battersea Antiques Fair with youngest brother, his wife Jan, who is an antique chair restorer and mrs maytrees, earlier  this week was enjoyable, informative and fun.

 

We traveled by District Line to Sloane Square, where because Jan had recently been ill, we took advantage of the free minibus to the fair rather than walking there.

 

Upon arriving we decided to try the Bone Idyll Cafe for lunch before looking at the exhibits on offer. Lunch was not overpriced and was enjoyable. I had a lamb stew with rice for about £13.

 

After lunch we toured the  exhibits separately although the picture above left, shows Jan, her husband and mrs maytrees, together at one of the exhibit stalls. The picture above right, shows a painting by a Ukrainian painter which seemed reasonably priced at  c.£400.

My favourite stand was one where a painter was advertising  his paintings including one of Nigel Havers and another, of two children, who I took to be the painter's daughters. Although one of the assistants took my details, sadly I doubt that I will be able to use the  services of the artist Alex Chamberlain, as his prices seem to range from £10,000 to £150,000 which is slightly above my affordability range. However his work does look good. None the less when I had a portarit of mrs maytrees painted some 50 years ago at the artist's studio in Warwick Square SW1, the price then was only few £100 but the painting was and is excellent 

Jan  explained that she visited the exhibition fairly frequently to provide her with ideas for her own reupholstering work, but given the prices of the exhibited works, she generally did not attend the Fair for the purposes of buying.

Some of the exhibits on display were fascinating others, for example a life sized lion, were almost silly, though there were a few which were not to my taste at all. There were many from countries of non-European continents, which were great to study. Others were of course not so great, but overall an excellent day out.

We were able to take the free minibus back to Sloane Square Underground station.

 

 

 

Vincent Van Gogh Exhibition

Despite this blog post's title we were unable to view the Van Gogh paintings at the National Gallery yesterday because of some behaviour of a few girls who were presumably moaning about their colleagues being sentenced to shortish terms of imprisonment for earlier just stop oil silliness. 

The ballot box is not a resource which such girls presumably use, though doubtless  supermarket shopping and travel by any means other than bikes, they undertake without a second thought about the oil used by  their shops and transport systems. If protest they must why not at the Chinese embassy  Indian High Commission or embassy of Saudi Arabia to name but a few huge users of coal and/or oil producers?

In the event though despite not being able to visit the Van Gogh exhibition younger brother, his wife, youngest sister, mrs maytrees and I enjoyed visiting the nearby National Portrait Gallery after an enjoyable lunch there together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The above paintings are from different rooms of the National Portrait Gallery and the visit there was most enjoyable.

There were copies of a prize collection in a booklet published by the solicitors of which my my old friend the late John Farr RIP was  a partner John Farr RIP

 

Southsea

Yesterday mrs maytrees and I ventured to Portsmouth and Southsea for lunch with old friends who had acquired  small flat there in an old military barracks. Southsea is conveniently situated at the southern end of the A3 trunk road.

Their  barracks now appears  thus : 

 

 

 

Weather was warm and dry though thunderstorms had been forecast.  En route to our lunch venue we passed by Portsmouth Cathedral, which to my taste is not especially attractive

 

We arrived to an old Fullers pub just on the sea front where  our friends had booked a table for the four of us.

The pub fare was excellent with my lunch being a tasty fish pie followed by some raspberry water ice. During lunch however the Prince of Wales aircraft carrier came up close and personal to the pub, presumably on its way to join its sister carrier HM Queen Elizabeth which was already in the naval dock.

 

  Nearby was a famous Portsmouth landmark:

 Following lunch we took a stroll along the empty beach, before driving home after a great day away.

 

New UK Government

So far Sir Kier Starmer's  UK Labour government is not doing too bad a job. Its policy over Russia's invasion of Ukraine appears unchanged from that of its predecessors. Indeed only a day or so ago  Boris Johnson a former prime minster, was photographed visiting Volodymyr Zelenskyy the President of Ukraine.

Of course, nearly every bump on the road at this early stage of the new government, may reasonably  be blamed on the Tories who were in power for over fourteen years albeit  initially in coalition  with the Lib/Dems.

Nonetheless, some bumps in the political road are beginning to appear.  Thus attempting to  add  VAT to  private school fees appears to me at least to be a mistake. If Labour is successful, the 20% VAT would make the UK alone among western European nations in charging VAT on private school fees. My own view is the The European Court of Human Rights would eventually strike down such a  20% charge if legal fights over the VAT charge proceed that far. 

Ironically the Tories were talking of withdrawing the UK from the ECHR given their Rwanda policy.

Many state school classes are already overcrowded and such a new imposition on private schools will add to the numbers seeking admission to state funded schools. One of the maytrees' grand children attends a private school and one a state school. Classes in the latter are already crowded.

On the other hand, Labour   has to make some difficult financial decisions as the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine to mention but two, have caused  considerable belt tightening for the UK and many other countries. Thus the new government has already cut the pensioners' extra winter fuel allowance of c.£250 per family. The maytrees' household benefited from this but  accept that such will be necessary belt tightening. 

There is talk of the new  government withdrawing pensioners' concessionary travel. This I doubt given government spending on subsidizing public transport, away from London. In any event London Transport seems unlikely to be directly affected as Londoners' fares and so on are not set at governmental level.

The UK elections and change over in government, seem almost civilised when compared with the huge sums of money being spent and rude election campaigns being conducted on the other side of the Atlantic. 

Indeed another difference is that in the UK, the governmental change over,  took barely twenty four hours from the conclusion of counting the votes cast, whereas that of our American friends will take weeks to effect.

Still no election process is perfectly fair; for example in France there is now being imposed or at least attempted, a new unelected Prime Minister  weeks after their election.

Reverting to the UK, the Reform party did not win anything like the number of seats proportionate to the numbers who voted for Reform. So my view is that the UK system at present needs some modifying perhaps with another vote about proportional representation, but still  currently  remains the least worst system.