Top Tip for the Big Top

My top recommendation so far this summer... has to be Giffords Circus. 

What an explosive miscellany of mad brilliance!

The usherettes are a flock of eccentric ostriches

and the music is as quirky as its vintage clad instrumentalists.

There's a saucer-eyed, opera-singing goddess with her white doves...

Tweedy the diminutive clown with his diminutive pony...

and a Parisian wirewalker who plays a deft crescendo on the trombone when his feet are back on solid ground.

All this punctuated by appearances from Brian the goose and Myrtle the bear in the intimate atmosphere of a handpainted arena.

Go and see for yourself! 

And me, I'm off on holiday with Nell Gifford's autobiography!

Fruit and veg

"I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs." Joseph Addison 1672-1719

For the past couple of weeks I have had my head down in the studio painting lots of lovely fresh veggies for a packaging project. I can’t reveal them yet but they’ll be coming to a “soup”ermarket near you soon!!

And what with trying to keep up with the Olympics too, my own garden has been sorely neglected, so today I’ll be sprinting up to the orchard and hurdling over the fruit cage to see what's left of the redcurrants and raspberries.