Off course

I didn't think that I could get myself functional early enough to drive Clare to the singing workshop at Ewenny Priory by ten, and singing is out of the question with my vocal cords so congested with catarrh, so she secured a lift with another singer instead. I woke up feeling somewhat better, but grateful that I didn't need to get up and go quite so early. After breakfast, I took the bus into town to see if the photo exhibition was open. Apparently it did open last evening, and the vernissage seems to have been a success, from the talk I overheard about sales of photobooks yesterday.

The exhibition was quirkily entitled 'Packed Lunch' a reference to the choices individual artists make to sustain them in their work - I think. Two dozen documentary photographers  exhibiting a selection of work on their chosen final year project theme. You were meant to figure out from an artist's collection title what story each was telling. In some cases the subject matter made this clear, in others it was too obscure for me to figure out. There's a Packed Lunch website introducing the artists and their ideas with a 20 minute video of interviews in which many of them mumble nervously to camera. A full gallery of photos will appear at the end of the week for which the exhibition runs.

I returned home and set off just at the right time for Ewenny, to rendezvous with Clare. Unfortunately in haste I failed to confirm to myself that I knew the route, took a wrong turning, and ended up in Llantwit Major, so I had to back track across country and arrived very late indeed, arriving three quarters of an hour late. The phone signal deep in the Vale of Glamorgan is poor in some places, and the satnav app on my phone seemed unable to update properly, causing even more confusion. 

Needless to say, Clare was upset as the delay made her worry that I might have had an accident. I still can't figure out why my mental map of the Vale let me down so badly. It's not as if I haven't been to Ewenny before, but even when I go there I took a wrong turning for the Priory. The brown tourist signs are there, but small and discreet not easy to spot. It was three by the time we reached home and had lunch.

After a short late siesta and a walk in the park, taking photos of the cricket matches being played, we had savoury pancakes for supper for a change, rather than sweet ones for breakfast. Then I watched a film on BBC Four about Tove Janssen, creator of the cartoon characters The Moomins and their surreal world. The woman who played her part looked remarkably like Tove did in her youth. 

She was an immensely gifted person, painter, cartoonist, children's story teller and playwright, and the story told was about her inspirations and intense love life as a woman for whom guilt free sex with women or men didn't bring the stability of mutual loving devotion she craved until relatively late in life. She struggled with the question of which of her talents to concentrate on, until she was finally able to give herself permission to be good at several things.