Saturday mornings are not a constructive time of the week here. But last Saturday I got myself up and out to a morning piano recital ... listening to a very talented young pianist, playing this, this and this  ... and thought, what a lovely way to see in the weekend. (Not many people there.)

Then it was over the road to the farmers' market where I bought a bunch of rhubarb. (Still haven't got round to making that crumble.) 

And panettone ice-cream for a healthy lunch, as good as it sounds. (After serious consideration, I have to say that it's better than Scoop around the corner. And cheaper, too.)

Then on to the National Portrait Gallery to see this exhibition of Great War portraits, the paintings too glib but the photographs of heroic boys and their destroyed faces so terribly moving.

  

Almost no mention of women apart from Edith Cavell and Mata Hari. I did think that the NPG could have given this a bit more space; there were crowds of people, of all ages and walks of life and a real sense of recognition that this war was part of all of our family histories. When I got home I searched on the internet for my great-uncle's grave in a naval cemetery in Malta. He was a ship's cook - I didn't know that, I'm not sure my mother did - whose ship was torpedoed in 1917. The following year his younger sister, my grandmother, was awarded one of the first OBEs for saving another girl's life in a munitions factory. I'd sooner have seen a photo of my granny - and all the other ordinary women who played a part in the war - than Mata Hari.