There is a tiny handful of people who I know who will get this post (you know who you are ladies!) so I feel justified in blogging about my new dress
I've bought it to wear when I give a paper at a conference in July - it's the first paper I've given for ages and consequently I'm feeling rather nervous about it.
But wearing a yellow floral dress (which I intend to team with my favourite yellow cardigan and trendy chunky white sandals) can't fail to keep me smiling, whether the paper goes well or not.
I'm reminded of Mildred's purchase of a new brown velvet hat to cheer up her winter coat in preparation for a meeting of the Learned Society in Barbara Pym's Excellent Women. I just hope I won't feel like Mildred did once she got to the meeting and thought, 'It was a pity I had not thought of reading up the subject a little, that would have been far more to the point than buying a new hat'...
Just back from a great mini-holiday in Paris where we did touristy things like visit Sacre Coeur and go to the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibition at the Pompidou Centre; saw the craziest exhibition of outsider art at the Musee d'art naif; and spent a relaxing afternoon at a park in St Ouen visiting an exhibition of art made by local school-children - here's Mark modelling one of the exhibits.
It's International Dance Festival Birmingham at the moment and we've already seen two brilliant shows.
Last Wednesday we saw Alias perform 'Sideways Rain' - which was so simple and yet so brilliant. The company enter the stage from the left, traverse it in a variety of repetitive movements, and then exit on the right - over and over again. It was mesmerising.
Then on Saturday we saw Kidd Pivot perform 'Tempest Replica' based on Shakespeare's The Tempest - Caliban was fantastic. The show blended film, lighting, shadow-work and dance and was really beautiful.
We see a lot of dance in Birmingham but these two shows were, in many ways, better than anything I've ever seen.
As usual, I've been inspired to dance myself. I've been going to a streetdance class at the gym, which is great fun and I'm wondering now about doing something more serious...
... but perhaps I could start by knitting some legwarmers.
