Present art

I was happy to use as my blip today the pictures Mr PB managed to hang on the wall yesterday - his birthday present to me. They are four of the photos I took on that magical first evening in Venice, when we'd just arrived off the Orient Express and headed out from our Grand Canal-side hotel to explore under a Canaletto-pink sky as the sun went down. I had only my phone with me, so the photos are less defined, I suppose, than they would have been with the camera, but I was pleased with them as pictures and delighted with the way they've transferred to these canvas block mounts.

My extra photo is probably the reason we were in Venice in the first place, and certainly the reason why I took the photos and why I wanted them on this particular wall. This big Canaletto is one of the block prints that were popular in 1970, when we got married, and we bought this one in a shop in Hyndland Road in Glasgow. It was the only picture we bought, and we hung it on the wall corresponding to the one it's on now, in our little flat in Queensborough Gardens. (I should perhaps point out that in this expensive street of spacious flats overlooking a centra strip of grass and trees, ours was perhaps the smallest and least expensive ground floor flat, losing a room to the close so that we had only the one bedroom. We loved it.)

So today, centuries apart as art and almost half a century apart as our favourite picture, Canaletto's Venice and mine...