A week in Carrbridge
Covered outside space: essential for the Scottish summer.
A Scottish highland summer is exceptional food…
…a taste of horse riding for the kids…
…long country walks and bike rides…
…and admiring the exotic vehicles that tour through sleepy Scottish villages.
Collecting the Business Breakthrough of the Year award at the AJ 100 dinner.
Listening to provoking debate organised by the Architectural Workers in Cressingham Gardens, designed by Edward Hollamby.
On holiday. Meeting the uniquely engaging Monsieur Girod.
Standing where Cezanne stood, in Aix.
Sitting where the Romans (or at least their subjects) sat, in Orange.
I’ve fallen out of the habit of keeping the sketch diary up to date, the online version anyway. I’ve kept the sketch books just the same but painting the six portraits I did recently used up all my spare time. Then I cycled across France.
I had an idea that I’d go back and colour up the old sketches and up load them all here: do a catch up blog. But of course I won’t. The thing about a diary is that the keeper is only interested in recording today, not writing up the past.
So here are the sketches from the current book.
There’s another sketch book that’s almost entirely missing.
So getting back up to date there’s lot’s about HTA, which is about right. This includes celebration dinners…
… and fascinating presentations: this one by Lara Feigel on her book ‘The Bitter Taste of Victory’…
…and this one on Women in Architecture and women in HTA. In the non architectural areas of our business: planning, graphics, sustainability and landscape design the genders are balanced throughout the grades. In architecture they aren’t. Something to sort.
In reverse:
The last event of the break, my dad’s 88th birthday.
New years day, a brass band in the livingroom.
Angus visited from France.
Catching up with old school pals in Dunfermline. The same as we were, a little more tired but a little better at communication.
Innes hid behind the sofa for the Queen’s speech.
Fun box was fun.
The only person on a plane to London City the week before Christmas.
Actually these are the things I did in between riding the bike and painting portraits, in preparation for cycling from London to Cannes in March. I’ll show you the portraits next time.
The kids being chased round the garden of Grays Court hotel by Henry the resident dog. Our slightly rowdy bunch spent a warm and sunny afternoon in their elegant, calm garden.
Back in Edinburgh we are inside waiting for the hailstones to stop and the icy winds to die down.
Luckily some of the excellent Dr Seuss books are being made into films. We stayed in and watched ‘The Lorax’.
A relaxing week in Jersey. We explored a bit, ate well, and learned about the history from before the tax haven days and before the World War Two occupation. Pirates and smugglers everywhere.That’s what it felt like, but it looks more like this:
We stayed here with Sarah, Dunc, Louis and Felix.
Felix & Louis were great playmates for our band of brigands and pointed out the homes of ex F1 drivers to me.
We spent our time practising getaways in a variety of vehicles. The drips on the cozy coupe are from Isla brewing potions from camellia leaves in the sunny front garden.
We looked for modern day pirates and smugglers, and maybe we saw some.
A privilege to stay at Eastwood House, Dunkeld for a week. It was the shooting lodge for Blair Castle, and is strung out along a river bank looking south over the Tay.
We spent a week playing by the river and enjoying local tourist attractions from Osprey watching (I missed the highlight as I was trying to stop Innes singing in the bird hide: bad form apparently) to the Perth Show.
The house has been superbly, sensitively, renovated by Alex and Cat.
Everything is beautifully chosen, whether it’s colour, art, or the degree of renovation. A small example is the chairs, so I drew a simple one every day.
The house is also where Beatrix Potter wrote an illustrated letter about a little rabbit, and this was the basis of her subsequent books about Peter Rabbit and others. She could draw a bit and had a scientific mind, so a different career may have lain before her had she not been a woman. Science’s loss, illustrated children’s story’s gain.
She said: “It’s all the same, drawing, painting, modelling, the irresistible desire to copy any beautiful object that strikes the eye…”
She wrote the letter in 1893. 120 years later, we occupied the same spaces she had, and passed a very pleasant family holiday.
We went to Port de Soller for a few days.
Palma and the terrace at night The pool at Porto Soller hotel
Notes on the house opposite the terrace.
Down in the port before dinner.
The view across the bay.
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