Trouble At The bank

Yorick Road 8.45 am

My walk to work this morning was fairly unremarkable except in one respect, as I passed the end of Yorick Road there was an attempted armed robbery in progress at Barclays bank. I took a hasty couple of pictures on my mobile phone then with the arrival of a police armed response team I decided the sensible thing would be to stop 'rubber necking' and get myself off to the safe distance of the Artcafé and a cup of coffee. Later this morning I set out for the Colchester café only to find the police had completely sealed off Mersea Island at the Strood, great drama indeed.

TBTE26.05.09

The 'Old Victory' flies the union flag.

Took a lovely walk this evening with the excuse of gathering some reference material for a commission and as it turned out I had the place to myself for the couple of hours I was out. The wind was blustery and the sun was bright and low creating marvellous shadows, on an evening like this I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

View From Artist H.Q.

Washing Line ~ Pastel

This is pretty much the view from the studio towards our house. I am aware that our rotating line complete with sunlit washing is wonky or as we island natives prefer to say 'on the huh!' In fact the tartist is often reminding me of its need for replacement.

SFTW ~ Catfood Sandwiches

This man can make wonderful music with anything that has strings on and has a very rare sense of humour, he's my favourite guitar player, (with the possible exception of Ry Cooder) no doubt about that. I hope this will help ease you into the weekend too!

Ginger Cake & Coffee & Custard

The tartist and I have just enjoyed an afternoon cappuccino accompanied by a slice of Jenny's Double Ginger Cake which is a new arrival at the Artcafé. Our Jenny has certainly inherited the tartist gene if her new cake is anything to go by, a very moist and substantially gingery cake which prompted us immediately to discuss how comfortably ginger as a flavour sits with coffee. There are certain obvious partners to coffee, chocolate for example or vanilla or almond perhaps but I hadn't really thought of ginger before this afternoon's slice of ginger cake and it was something of a minor revelation. A bit off topic but still on the subject of ginger cake, Jenny's recipe came up in conversation and Clare from Colchester Artcafé revealed that she used to have ginger cake and custard as a pudding, then the tartist piped up and said 'ooh yeah my mum used to do it too in our house' and I have to confess there were many times when we as kids were treated to McVities Jamaica Ginger Cake and Birds custard as a pudding (quite often after Cubs whilst watching Z-Cars or Rising Damp). Now I recon this combination was possibly going on in the seventies up and down the land and I'd be curious to learn if anyone else had this as a pud. in their household at the time?