a morning in town

My mother and I went into Colchester to have a look at an exhibition currently on at The Minories, and a spot of lunch.  By way of researching our lunch spot we walked through the top of Castle Park past the castle to look at a couple of the cafes she used to go to with my father, when they both used to go to language classes in Colchester.  Both had changed hands, or at least style, and the Italian she used to like had turned into the sort of place that puts big photos of the food on the menu displayed outside.  That did not fill us with hope.

As a bonus, though, we did discover a splendid piece of municipal bedding in the park, where a foliage covered model of a vintage car stood surrounded by several quite lively woven willow figures.  The remains of the summer's bedding, still valiantly flowering in places, told that the installation must have been there for months, only neither of us had visited Castle Park.  My mother was very taken with the figures, but my particular passion was reserved for the car and the Castle Park name all planted up with succulents.  I have a great weakness for 3-D carpet bedding.  It is always a thrill when Birmingham or some other metropolitan authority brings some to the Chelsea Great Pavilion.

The artist at The Minories was rather good.  His name is John Doubleday, and the show covers works from the early 1960s to the current day, all still-lifes on a narrow range of themes, mostly stone bottles, jars and flowers, with some bronzes thrown in.  I tried to decide why you would want a bronze casting of a jar with paint brushes in it, when you could simply get a jar and some brushes and have the real thing, but failed to come to an opinion.  His use of colour in the paintings was muted and subtle, and grew on us both as we spent time looking.  I would hazard a guess that Paul Nash was an influence.  It was a selling exhibition, and some of the paintings had sold, mainly the ones with flowers in, which might say something about the great British picture buying public, but I was not in the market for a picture.

We had meant to get lunch in the cafe at the Minories, but when we got there we found an angry woman shouting at the only two members of staff in sight that she would not pay sixty pence for hot water, no other cafes charged for hot water, you did not charge for hot water, was there a manager present she could speak to.  The two members of staff ignored us, and the two other people standing by the counter possibly waiting to pay, and the angry woman ignored her baby, which was screaming.  We left.  My mother said she did not like the smell anyway, and I wondered how much fuss it was really appropriate to make about the cost of hot water.  If you could afford to visit a cafe at all you were probably not down to your last sixty pence, and you could always recoup the cost by withholding the tip and then fire off a stiff letter to the manager explaining that nowhere charged for hot water and that you would not be back.  We went to Prezzo instead, which has the full five stars for food hygiene, and I had goat cheese and beetroot salad.  I am extremely partial to goat cheese and beetroot salad, and tiramisu.