Danielle's Birthday Weekend

Friday we checked into our hotel [next to Commonwealth Club] and in the evening saw As I Desire You by Pirandello

http://www.theambassadors.com/playhouse/sp_p2308.html

with Bob Hoskins [not great] and Kirsten Scott Thomas [great] which was a really good play. The theatre is half a block from the hotel, so we were very spoilt.

Saturday we went on one of our London walks that we used to love. Breakfast at Giraffe on the South Bank, then on to the Tate Modern where we saw a load of white boxes

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/whiteread/default.shtm

which was actually really good. We then walked through the city to Somerset House where we saw the David Hockney watercolors of East Yorkshire

http://www.gilbert-collection.org.uk/exhibitions/Hockney/index.html

which again were really good, particularly with the local connection [we know quite a lot of the places he paints in the series]

Next stop was the National Portrait Gallery where we looked at the paintings of the Tudors and Jacobites, and found them really interesting. The sort of paintings that have always seemed inherently boring up until now, maybe at 48 I am beginning to grow up - probably not. http://www.npg.org.uk/live/collect.asp

We had a drink with Emma at the club, then had a meal together for Danielle's birthday, just the two of us. A perfect day was capped by watching Preston win on Match of the Day.

The photo is from the cold snap last week, the three silver birches in our garden.