It’s a dog’s life

You will be pleased to know that I have finally managed to do a little bit of painting picking up where I left off with the French Grenadiers (click here for a reminder). Not much to show for it yet but at least it’s a start.

One problem I have with my new hobby-room that I never had in our old house is that our labrador Snuff seems to think that it’s her room not mine. She likes to lay out on the floor right behind my chair so that I can hardly move and is very indignant at any suggestion that she might get out of the way.

This is a picture of my hobby-room buddy enjoying a little snooze whilst keeping half an eye on General Longstreet as he tries to get Lee to abandon the idea of ordering Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg. I’m a firm Union supporter myself but I have my suspicions that Snuff may have leanings towards the rebellion.

Back in the UK

Well, we made it to New York and back again safely while the Eyjafjallajokul volcano was taking a little break from disrupting North Atlantic and European airspace. I don’t like flying very much at the best of times so I was glad that our flights were unaffected – hats off to the BA crews who navigated their way around the “plume of doom”.

New York was great (in fact a helluva’ town) and we had a brilliant, if rather exhausting time. I was there for half a day back in 1976 but we had a full four days on this trip and were able to visit many of the sights and drink in the atmosphere. Best thing was probably the view downtown from the top of the Rockefellor Centre and of course getting to see Trump Tower for real – although the great man didn’t appear to be in residence.

I also went into the Metropolitan Museum of Art where I took this picture of a painting depicting Napoleon at the battle of Friedland. I’m not sure who the artist was but the detail is stunning. However, I have to report that I’ve still not made any progress on the other type of painting, namely Hinton Hunts but I hope to remedy that soon.