Radical Change in Layout.

When I temporarily removed the long black ceramic building from the baseboard in order to affix to it the brass overhead lighting strut, I was gob-smacked at how attractive the cream ceramic building then looked standing on its own.

Originally, I was very keen on having a canyon-like city street along which the murky side of city life could proceed. This is after all meant to be the depiction of a big, bustling European city circa 1950s/60s with a Maigret feel to it.

Comme ci.

I would still like to maintain that feel but I've put myself into a bit of a corner by having such a small baseboard: I can't have the cream building on show AND the black building across from it.

Will try to come up with a solution: in the meantime some photographs of the layout with the black building relocated.

As you can see, I've also been experimenting with the location of the church facade.

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What really impresses me is that I don't feel even a pang of irritation that I have spent all those hours trying to rig up the overhead street lighting gantry which obviously I don't need any more. If this had happened 6 months ago I would have resorted to lying on my bed staring at the ceiling and despising myself for having been so stupid (yet again).

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Currently listening to:

Dinu Lipatti, the brilliant Romanian pianist who died of Hodgkins disease  in 1950 at the age of 33.

Lipatti was born in 1917. Howard Hodgkin the artist was born in 1932 and is still alive. Hodgkin is one of my favourite artists. There was a mind blowing exhibition of his paintings in the National Gallery in Edinburgh a few years ago.

Famous for painting the frames as well.

Howard Hodgkin

Howard Hodgkin's grandfather was the medical scientist after whom Hodgkins' disease was named.

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Last night's dinner:

More sausages from the freezer, this time cooked with dried mushrooms in a tomato sauce with rice.

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Currently reading:

But have also started and am reading in parallel another 20th Century autobiography:

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Miscellany:

I would never have survived in the Gulags. I simply cannot tolerate manual labour. Over the last couple of days, two men have dug up our garden path and then paved it with concrete slabs. They have worked solid for the two days bent over their picks and shovels.

This is more my scene.

The "Portrait of Duranty" by Degas

The original of this painting can be found in Glasgow's Burrell Museum.