"The shortest distance from land to mouth"

As I said on Monday, we all love local food. But by last month we four had already eaten all the potatoes I planted this year. This week therefore, in glorious Indian Summer sunshine, I have been digging up more of our lawn. Another nine square metres under cultivation next Spring does not amount to very much perhaps, but in a week so full of doom and gloom on the front pages that one is made to feel helpless, it is at least a small step in what I see as the right direction.

After our "Henry Moore - Surrealism and beyond" lecture this afternoon - when both Caroline and I fell asleep - I cycled down to check out the Literature Festival book tent, and ran into Jane Blunden and Finola Sumner, just emerged from John Gray's talk. If the Moore talk was dreary, the gospel according to Gray seems to have been lively but pessimistic, with seismic shift as its watchwords. "Things will never be the same again," Finola reported. Before I could get in a boast about my gesture with the spade, Jane came out with the healing words: "It's the potato patch". A kindred spirit indeed!

Surrealism and Spain

Paul McKee dressed very much for the occasion on Friday evening last, for the opening of Surrealism Returns at Cheltenham Art Gallery. I enjoyed the exhibition as much as any I've seen at Cheltenham.

As usual the display is limited by space, but what it lacks in quantity it makes up for in quality. I knew nothing about the original Realism and Surrealism exhibition, which took place in Gloucester 70 years ago; but it is clear from the present show what an effect the conduct of the Spanish Civil War was having at that time upon the artists exhibiting: not just Picasso and Miro, but others too protested forcefully against Fascist atrocities.

At a recent visit to the glaucoma clinic, I was reminded how important it was to keep taking the drops to avoid blind spots developing. We all it seems have blind spots about the history of the decades immediately before and following our year of birth: I must read more about that Civil War period before we depart for Spain later this month.