Tuesday 18th March

Feel a lot happier today. Had to push my way through Cathedral Square on the way to art school this morning. There were loads of school children around and I even caught a bit of english - ‘Monet, ok guys listen to me. Monet painted this Cathedral in an impressionistic style. Anyone know what that is?’ The kids were just staring in to space, shuffling their feet and looking pretty bored. The good old days of school trips! Once at art school I got a phone call from Liz saying they were all going to be late, so I headed up to the painting room to say hi to the year 2’s. Then Patricia arrived and asked if I had met the photography teachers yet. I hadn’t and so she took me down to where one of them was teaching, Florence D-something I think her name is. I stood in the corner of the room while Patricia introduced me and I organised a proper meeting for tomorrow afternoon. Back in the painting room, Mary then Liz and finally Grace arrived, her computer has crashed and won’t turn back on. We had bought food as told last week (none of the french did), so we had croquettes, jaffa cakes, tuc crackers and some biscuits to nibble on while Chloe talked about her work. I found it very interesting. She takes photos and then super-imposes different images on to each other. She is very interested in preserving memory, especially of travel which is what I do with most of my photos too. After Chloe had finished, Patricia had to leave (but not after bringing forward our presentations to next week though - arrggghhh!), and we somehow got around to arranging to go to a concert next week which Helene is performing in. It turns out as well as climbing she also plays the piano, sings and is in a band. I hope we can get tickets - it sounds a bit like a musical evening at Hartismere. Grace also arranged a possible climbing trip with her. After lunch and back at home, I got down to trying to write what i’m going to say about my art work, and then attempted to translate some of it into french. Here it is:
Mon travail est tout différent. Je faire illustration, textile, photographie et bijoux, et utilisation différent matérials. Maintenant, mon travail principal est illustration. J’ai juste fini un livre de compte pour les enfants s’appeller ‘One Orange Octopus’. Dans les illustrations, j’ai utilisations peinture, encre, couture, papier, feutre et vif couleur. La pages devenir grossir, alors le nombres devenir grossir.
It probably makes no sense at all but at least i’ve made a start!