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p. Mr. Bsag has an exhibition of his paintings at the Far From The Madding Crowd pub in Oxford, so we got up at an unreasonably early hour to go and hang them up. Several hours later, and with a great deal of “up a bit, no—down a bit” business, we finally got about 26 paintings hung and labelled.

p. It was great to see them all hanging in such a big space. At home, we can only see a couple hanging together, and can only view them from a couple of metres away, so it makes a huge difference to see them in a big group and from a greater distance. Anyway, if anyone happens to be in Oxford, do go and visit the Far From The Madding Crowd (down the saucily-named Friar’s Entry, between the Odeon cinema and Borders). It’s a nice pub, and you might like the paintings. If you see a ginger-haired, short-ish man in there, say the magic word and he might even buy you a pint.

I’ve been meaning to write about the animated film [“Spirited Away(Disney website for the film)”:http://disney.go.com/disneyvideos/animatedfilms/miyazaki/index2.html]—a Disney produced Anime style film directed by Hayao Miyazaki. The week before, we had seen “Belleville Rendez-Vous”:http://www.rousette.org.uk/mt-static/blog/archives/000432.html so we were looking forward to another animated feature. When we saw the trailer at the cinema, the film was dubbed with American voices, but we were relieved that the version actually shown was in Japanese, with subtitles[1]. The animation style was stunning, but I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the plot.

p. The story is roughly as follows: a little girl (Chihiro) is en route to her new home with her parents, angry and sullen about having to leave all her friends behind. Her father takes a short cut across country and they end up in what appears to be an abandoned theme park. Her parents find an empty restaurant with the counter groaning with food, and start to tuck in like greedy pigs. Which—as it turns out—is exactly what they turn in to.

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