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Persephone and the Pomegranate Seeds Oil on paper by Celia Turner. September...Autumn...Winter...Spring The trees flush red and drop their leaves, the flowers wither and the crops stop growing. Persephone has travelled to the Underworld and Demeter roams the earth missing her daughter. But Spring will come again, and Persephone will return to her mother. The grasses will become green, the flowers will bloom, the trees will sport blossom, then leaves and then fruit. Demeter and Persephone will walk hand in hand, talking, singing, and laughing and the evening primroses will open just to see them passing by.

Here is my new 'retro' radio, by the toaster and with the manky back door in frame. But this little gem of a radio blasts out SO much fun every day, it brightens my life. It is tuned to Radio X. I have listened to XFM since its conception in 1997. I remember many a Saturday afternoon driving to the seafood stall but having to pull over so many times in fits of giggles, tears streaming down my face, listening to Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. The crab and prawns always gave me indigestion as I would be doubled up on the way back home. Cramped with laughing with a belly full of fresh crab is quite painful. In 1996 I went to see Oasis at Maine Road. It was THE BEST NIGHT OF MY LIFE, as anyone who knows me will testify. I still, to this day could bore for England about it but oh what a glorious night. I was on a high for two whole weeks after the gig and wore my sky-blue Oasis T shirt and trackie bottoms to meet my kids from school. proudly, much to their embarrassm...

Virginia Woolf by Roger Fry (1917) I love this painting of Virginia Woolf. The faraway look in her eyes seems to encapsulate the myriad of thoughts that constantly swirled around in her head. She looks beautiful which would not be a common description of this great lady. It's such a shame that a generation of cinemagoers will only know of Virginia Woolf through the narrow portrait given in the film 'The Hours' where she comes across a dull and dour woman. I would have so loved to have been a part of The Bloomsbury Group, those artists, philosophers, writers, and intellectuals who revelled in each other's company during the first half of the 20th century. Fancy belonging to a group whose members included Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, E.M Forster, Duncan Grant, Lytton Strachey, and Leonard Woolf himself of course. What the Bloomsbury Set would have thought of life today is anyone's guess. I think I would have preferred to live in an era of dramatic and important li...