Pretentious? Zoi?

Oh dear. I got a bit carried away by enthusiasm for today's lecture and didn't resist the temptation to quote poetry. At least it wasn't too well known, so if I made any mistakes it's not that likely anyone noticed. It was a damn fine lecture about the history of photography, and I do love really old photos. I don't mean so much the staged ones of the awkward -looking Victorian people being snapped, very slowly, for posterity, but the ones taken by early enthusiasts, many of whom had the artist's eye as well. There was a very early one by Fox Talbot which I loved - the back of a house with an open shed door and a besom broom leaning against it, and a picture, taken from a low angle, of several flights of worn stone steps, curving and converging, at Wells Cathedral. There was a poignant one of the Valley of Death (sorry to be melodramatic), bare and bleak except for scattered cannonballs, a picture of Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War, a cheerful Rossini and a pair of Scottish fisher girls from a century and a half ago. Fascinating. I'd love to have them in a book to stare at and study.

Anyhoo, I duly did my speech, all 3 pages of it - yes, I wrote it out verbatim although I didn't actually read it out, but there were too many people to thank and too many specific things to say, to just do bullet points and hope. Well, so I claim. It was a formalish annual review. Enough excuses.

Afterwards, we took the speaker for lunch, which was a pleasure.

And now, as the sun still shines, I'm going to ride statelily into town to fetch vegetables for dinner. I don't know what we're having for dinner yet - doesn't bother me, I had lunch out. Heh heh.

three-quarters of an hour later Oops! It's the Sage's birthday. I'd forgotten. *heads out for the freezer to find something easy to defrost and delicious*.