Colour me a picture

Can it really be nearly the end of the week? Half term almost over? I'n sure days over half terms are at least two hours shorter than any other day of the year ... We've been having a good week, a gentle week trying to find some colour despite the grey skies. My lovely M gave me this beautiful pink posy (perhaps too big for a posy) of flowers for Valentines Day. Roses, tulips and ranunculus, some of my favourite flowers in my favourite colour...



We had a lovely day at home us Roses. Mr Roses disappeared into the kitchen late afternoon, leaving us girl roses in front of the TV watching I Capture the Castle (again, but really oh so perfect for Valentines Day) and passing round a huge bowl of chocolates that Big Sister had bought for us to share. Once again Big Sister and I blubbed our way through it whilst Little Sister rolled her eyes and did her best to comfort us. Meanwhile in the kitchen M had rustled up an almighty feast for us all including heart shaped mashed potatoes for the girls ... I waddled back to the TV afterwards to watch Edge of Love with him. Not perhaps the perfect pairing of films. more a heads and tails of love, but I enjoyed them both.



The days this week have been grey and overcast. On Tuesday we went for our walk.



The skies may have been miserable but there were tantalising glimpses of sunshine. Us three girls climbed up and down our favourite paths along the Downs and through the woods.



Six years apart in age, it does me good to see my daughters united sometimes like this, walking hand in hand, if not shoulder to shoulder, laughing and giggling, who'd have thought that only an hour earlier they were screeching at each other at home?



We are all together so rarely these days and I know as the girls grow up those days will dwindle even more and I am learning to treasure these times as much as possible - screeching apart.



Yesterday we decided on a whim to go to London. To see some colour. Another grey day but there's always colour to be found in London. This florist stall sits at the end of a street that I remember coming to when I had just left school. I'd just been given my first reading list for University and I'd come here to buy my French text books, feeling oh so excited and grown up. Just seeing all these beautiful flowers brought all those memories back.



Big sister has had lots of art work to do recently. I remembered how wonderful a visit I made to the National Gallery was when I was her age with my school. So we decided to go there and pop in first of all to National Portrait Gallery. I'm glad we did. So many wonderful portraits, photographs etc. A great collection of photos from Vanity Fair too. We looked at the more modern portraits from the last century or so, fantastic! A great collection of Bloomsbury paintings. The girls couldn't believe they saw so many famous people painted in so many different styles. (we also spent an inordinate amount of time examining in close up how to paint shoes, but that's another story ...).



We ate some sandwiches in Trafalgar Square and it felt so strange to be sitting there like a tourist when I had grown up in London and knew the place so well. A whistle stop tour of the National Gallery allowed Little Sister and Big Sister to see some of the most famous paintings in the world - they couldn't believe that there in front of them was Van Gogh's Sunflowers and Yellow Chair, in one corner was that famous painting by Renoir - in fact so many paintings that they had seen so many times in books, postcards, t shirts were there in front of them. It was lovely to watch them looking at them close up for the first time.



But there's only so much culture us Roses, well the younger ones, can take. With vouchers from Christmas burning a hole in their pockets, I knew it was time to tackle Oxford Circus. We walked up Regent Street, passed the shop I used to work in on Saturdays when I was at school, we pressed our noses against the window at Hamleys, waved at Libertys and arrived at teenage heaven - Topshop. No shortage of colour here! I watched Big Sister dance her way through the rails, Little Sister and I trailing behind, she swooped from one item to another and I remembered how I used to feel in just this very shop years ago. We emerged relatively unscathed, minus the Christmas vouchers, but Big Sister triumphant holding a skirt that coincidentally resembles all the beautiful paintings we'd seen that day and the promise of Spring days that lie ahead.