The front garden Robin

One of the front garden Robins decided to pose for me this afternoon - actually I think s/he was more interested in getting to the fat balls on the bird table. The ones who own the back garden have to wait until other birds drop them crumbs, so they are not so easy to photograph on the floor. The light was against this one - it would have been good to have more of a catch-light in the eye.

A tidying up kind of a day for me - some laundering, some hoovering. Putting the house back to rights after the weekend. I was intending to do some drawing but didn't quite get there. I have sorted out the new (cheap IKEA) tables in the conservatory however. I like doing my artwork in there as the light is so good but up until now it's been too cool. Today was wonderful and springlike - long may it last!

We are back on grandparent duties tomorrow so that mum and dad can do some work. Where should we go? We thought about Eureka but they are putting up a new display space so they are advising against a half-term visit. Maybe the coast - though the forecast is not quite as good in the afternoon as it is here. or perhaps The Deep in Hull (the sea-life centre). I suspect the kids would quite like Cannon Hall (playgrounds go down well with Jimmy and animals with Bobby) but that means bringing them back almost as far as us. maybe we'll just play it by ear tomorrow.

We went to see `Lincoln' last night at the Penistone Paramount - a spur of the moment decision. What an amazing and amazingly moving film it is and the performance by Daniel Day Lewis and a number of the other actors was superb. Our only difficulty was a struggle to understand the accents in places - mostly it didn't matter but in just one or two places it did. It made us realise how poor our knowledge of American History is ... and our Education Secretary of State wants to take our history curriculum backwards and make it more Anglo-centric. Shame on him for the ignorant and arrogant man he is!