In Newcastle yesterday for the reading group, I intended just to walk straught to the library, no diversions: but as I walked up Pink Lane, my eye was snagged by bright colours off the my right, and I found myself in Forth Lane, now the Forth Lane Gallery (what the organisers say about it).

I didn't exactly wish I had my camera with me, because I was already carrying a very heavy book: but next time...

A Guardian article describes the annual art exhibition in which the chosen works are displayed in front of the Pyramids. I'm ambivalent about this. On the one hand, I enjoy site-specific art, art designed to do whatever it is that art does wihin a specific landscape; on the other hand, osn't it cheating, using the Pyramids to make your art look good? But I liked the picture of Shilo Shiv Suleman's giant lotus blooms, and I scurried off to the internet in search of more pictures.

Well, the bad news is that the more I see of those flowers, the more I suspect that what I really lie here is the photograph itself (credited only to 'Forever is Now'); other pictures leave me confused. There's a good one on the artist's website (scroll down) all golden light and with a gaggle of cyclists included for scale; elsewhere, a clearer representation makes me wonder whether flowers are improved by being hugely magnified: I don't want to imagine the insects that they might attract ...

The Art d'Egypte website has more pictures of this and previous exhibitions: it is so designed that the pictures (one per artwork) are awkwardly cropped. This German site has some better images of the 2022 exhibition.

Pretty pictures: it's what the internet is for...

Yesterday's Guardian had a story about a series of photographs of the mantelpieces of creative people. As I type that, I think how sickening it sounds, but the initial photograph was rather jolly. So, even though I usually skip these house-design articles, I read on. It's a personal project, and is quite open about being inspired by the photographer's mother's mantelpiece in the first place, but even so, I was growing irritable about the extent to which these creative people were the friends and family of the photographer. However, now that you have been warned, I did quite enjoy these photographs. In particular, scroll right down almost to the end for Virginia Ironside's show of hands.

durham_rambler consulted the tide tables, and declared that this morning we should visit the castle: this gave us the longest possible overlap of castle open, causeway closed, and so the best chance of avoiding the crowds. When did Lindisfarne start to be so crowded? There have always been visitors, of course, but I was quite shocked by the crowds we had to negotiate yesterday, driving through the village. Anyway, durham_rambler's strategy worked, and for much of our visit we had the castle to ourselves (and some very discreet staff).

The display in the castle has been radically altered since our last visit. This is not surprising. We were last on the island three years ago, in the aftermath of Covid, and they seem to have been restricting visiting: my diary says "The castle is already fully booked for the week, but we have a slot to visit the priory tomorrow." So the last time we were in the castle must have been in 2018, in the aftermath of major building works, when the interior was mostly bare, but for an art installation. Now the furniture has returned, and as previously represents the period when the castle belonged to Edward Hudson. There is more emphasis on the process by which Edward Lutyens transformed the shell of a Tudor fortress into a holiday cottage like no other, but there is still room to show the results of that transformation. Information boards quote guests, particularly Lytton Strachey, who was not impressed: "Three miles of sand, partly underwater with posts to show the way - rather alarming to the nervous... then an abrupt rock with a building on it". He visited more than once, though, so it must have had some appeal:



In the upper gallery - which I remember as a music room, often full of the cello music played by Madame Suggia, a frequent guest of Hudson's - there is Embodies Cacophonies, a light and sound installation by artist composer Liz Gre. A video downstairs explains something of the background of the piece, which was intriguing: the thing itself less so. Trails of fairy lights heaped up and hanging from the ceiling; gauzy hangings; music triggered by the movement of visitors (perhaps this was one thing which would have worked better if we had not had it to ourselves)...

We left the castle and reached the Ship with five minutes to order our crab sandwiches before they stopped serving lunch. Then home through the rain, pausing only to buy some biscuits, to dry off and make coffee...

I wouldn't normally think of a road tunnel as a must-see attraction. At best it's something that makes the journey easier - and if I'm on holiday, I'm more likely to complain that it also makes the journey less interesting. But I might make an exception in this case.

Bonus link: more about the art works, from the tunnel's website.

100 for the Ocean is a collaboration of 100 photographers to sell prints in aid of ocean conservation. Their prices are serious, though not stratospheric, so I won't be buying; the collection is also mysterioudly lacking in puffins. But well worth a look - there's an emperor penguin that I can only describe as 'in flight'. But my favourite is Dmitry Kokh's House of Bears, in which polar bears have reoccupied an abandoned Soviet weather station. (here it is again in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competion, as insurance against link rot).

I have been wandering through the artwork of Maurice Gouju (aka Goujo and Amalric), of which the internet offers an extensive display. Which isn't exactly what I was looking for...

I had managed to decipher the tiny signature on the back cover of my copy of Georges Simenon's La danseuse du Gai-Moulin and wanted to know more, but I haven't managed to find any information about the artist, beyond his name, and of his cheerful poster designs. And I did eventually find his design for Fayard's issue of Simenon novels. He appears to have provided a single design which could be varied by the use of different colours: mine has a grey typewriter on a bright pink background. The back cover shows a glass, a tobacco pouch and a pen. I wonder whether this, too, was used on different books, but I suspect it was, because it doesn't have any particular application to the plot.

This poster for the National Lottery seemed particularly appropriate, as Christmas comes to an end: three kings bearing a double chance of winning the lottery, to wish you a joyeuse fête des rois. Tonight we will go to Phantoms and the Phil to hear three new ghost stories read by their authors, the event which marks the end of our Christmas.

Photographed by Natalya Saprunova (via - ah, I found it via the Guardian's 'My best shot' feature, but I see they had previously run a selection of these photos as a photo essay).

Warning: the portfolio includes a severed reindeer head. But also colourful costumes, fine embroidery and a strong contender for Best National Flag. An endangered language is mentioned but not explored.

I had never heard of Sheila Paine until I read her obituary in the Guardian's 'Other Lives' section. Now I want to know more, to read the books she wrote about her travels - that may not be so easy! Something to explore when we return from holiday ...

But I wish I'd seen this exhibition of her photographs.