nice day

It's been quite a nice day today. It started with being gently awakened from my slumber by the morning sun filling my bedroom. Much better than being rudely torn from some strange dream and forced into reality by my radio alarm clock! I'm probably still quite tired, but feel much better for waking up naturally. Got up, had a bit of breakfast and then tentatively rang up for radiohead tickets. I rang up about 8 mins before the 9am start, and got through to the queuing message, so I hung on. Ten minutes later I was purchasing a couple of expensive tickets. Excellent, the first time I've been successful in claiming tickets for an oversubscribed event. It's going to be fantastic to see this band live for the first time, even more so in a relatively small venue.

Took some bottles and jars to the recycling point and popped into tescos to get a few bits and pieces for the church coffee morning that I'd be hosting. Quite a few people came round and we enjoyed chatting over tea and coffee, mainly trying to work out which items from our old building we still wished to keep and which could be given to a new home, scrapped, or archived. Fascinating to hear some of the stories behind certain of the items from our elder members.

Afterwards I took a stroll into town to pay in a cheque, the weather was really quite fine, lovely sunshine, almost t-shirt weather. After paying in the cheque I began browsing some clothes shops, but after forking out for the tickets this morning I felt I'd spent more than enough already. Decided to head up to the library, got asked to do some market research, which I agreed to. Fairly dull questions about fizzy drinks. Eventually I made it to the library, and after borrowing a dvd, I headed up to the Graves gallery. I'm ashamed to say that this was the first time I'd browsed this gallery since moving to sheffield almost 8 years ago! However, it was great just to amble around the galleries and enjoy some of the artwork on offer. I'm not much of an art connoisseur, and can't really articulate why it is that I like some works more than others. Aspects I admire are the use of colours, the technical skill required in the piece, the questions or challenges the piece might be making. During today's visit I was struck especially by two pieces. One was a sculpture called 'the kiss', which depicted a naked couple in a passionate kissing embrace, the girl much shorter, reaching up to meet the stooping boy. The embrace really felt loving, and it was only as I walked around the sculpture for perhaps the third time that I realised that the couple were both physically handicapped, perhaps the result of their mother's taking thalidomide during gestation. It was amazing that this realisation was merely secondary to the image of love I saw. Which I think says volumes about love and discrimination.
The second work that struck me was a portrait, there was something about the features of the portrayed girl that drew me to the painting. I was delighted to see it was by Degas, as I had previously admired some of his work in a gallery in edinburgh, which made me pat my artistic taste on the back.