Nothing Changes.

I've often passed the fabulous Victorian gothic pile at Virginia Water and wondered what it was. Well now I know. It's a collection of beautifully restored grade one listed dwellings, where even the communal pool has a painted hammerbeam ceiling.
What was it? Thomas Holloway had it built in the 1870s as an "asylum for the mentally sick of the middle classes" with the enthusiastic backing of the 'Commissioners in Lunacy'
Now Foxton's estate agency has a four bedroom residence there up for rent at £25,000 a month (or £5,769.23 per week, they say). Not much has changed!

NewburyBlueBadge

NewburyBlueBadge
Originally uploaded by jpequal1

Idling away a few moments in a Newbury retail park with the tiny Canon Ixus 100 IS

Ex Fork

So that's the end of gardening for today - where's that Claret?

Matthew Warchus

Matthew Warchus won this year's Tony Award for 'Best Direction of a Play'. At a rehearsal room in Clapham we arranged two chairs in the light from the windows; he sat in one and I sat in the other, and we talked. While we talked I took some photographs. Nice chap - brilliant director.

Dad's Ashes

Buried Dad's ashes on Saturday, and when everyone else had left, my brother and I found ourselves chatting to him as if he was still alive in his little grave, or floating around us in some ethereal way. It's good to have a point of focus to remember him from, and a crisp new stone with white writing and fresh flowers in a timeless country graveyard is as good as it gets.
The vicar did a great piece about dead looking things going into the ground, like daffodil bulbs, and producing something unexpectedly beautiful.
Mother cried and thanked everyone, and said how good it was and cried some more. Then she asked if she had died yet, or whether it was just Dad.
After a great tea party upstairs in the care home that has been her home for 8 months, and half an hour in the garden, we wheeled her back into the day room. A look of genuine astonishment appeared on her face, "Who are all these people? I'll never be able to cook for them all."
But despite that, she's starting to make friends now.

Teak

A crackle of splintering wood and a teak garden chair collapsed. Nobody hurt, but the broken wood was pink all the way through, like cheap mahogany.

School

A day at the amazing Colet Court School today produced one thousand four hundred pictures to sort through - this one shows lunch time.