In front

The highlight of my trip to the supermarket today came at the checkout. The young chap serving me called to those waiting to be served, saying "excuse me madam, I think the lady behind you is in front of you." 

On a shorter than usual walk today, I found another four sorry, we're closed signs to add to my Flickr collection.

A first listen today to Matthews' Southern Comfort's 1970 album of the same name, on which my favourite track was Dream Song.

A bit of confusion about sundry Canalettos today.  I was reading about a painting from 1759/60 by Bernardo Bellotto who signed himself as Canaletto.  He was not THE Canaletto - famous for majestic canvasses of Venice and its canals but was the nephew and student of Giovanni Antonio Canal Canaletto.

Nevertheless, his The Freyung, Vienna, from the Southeast is a fine townscape. He used a camera obscura to capture the outlines of the buildings he painted, to ensure that he portrayed their size, shape and perspective accurately. This painting is a richly detailed scene of a busy, wide thoroughfare full of urban bustle and the jumbled detail of real places. His use of light and shadow is especially good, the eye being drawn to a small image in the centre of the picture of a servant girl in a blue skirt, red bodice and white shirt and bonnet, surrounded by shadow but herself in bright sunshine.

I know the street depicted quite well from a few visits to Vienna, one of my favourite cities. It is now quite nondescript and mundane by comparison to some of the grander boulevards and public squares not far away although the large church, Schoteenkloster ( or "Scottish Monastery"), is still there. As the name suggests it was founded by Irish Benedictines in 1155, as Ireland was then known as Scotia major. 

On the right of the painting is a tavern - Zu den drei haken or "the Three Hooks."  There is still an old restaurant of that name a few hundred metres from the Freyung, in Singerstrasse. Sadly, of course, at present it is closed.