I've been enjoying this book slowly, not so much for the wealth of architectural detail but for wonderful stories like this.
Would you have guessed that this is a design - not for a castle in Spain - but for Selfridge Castle, drawn up for the flamboyant owner of the department store - near Bournemouth! It was never built. Probably just as well.
 

Can it really be 30 years? Apparently, it can. It was 1986 when I saw Pauline Collins as Shirley Valentine in the West End - so long ago that I'd actually forgotten it was a one-woman show as I'd got it muddled in my mind with the film that came out a couple of years later. 

To be honest, I wasn't expecting too much when I booked for the 30th anniversary revival of the play - but what a fun night it turned out to be and a terrific performance from an actress I think we were supposed to recognise from TV but, of course, we'd never heard of her. (It's touring until November.) 

Coincidentally, I saw Pauline Collins a couple of weeks ago still typecast as a similarly put-upon housewife who escapes not to Greece but to the Ile de Ré in a truly dire film The Time of Their Lives ... with Joan Collins, pretty much playing herself as a faded Hollywood star with a gammy hip who escapes from a care home. You have to hand it to Dame Joan for being game enough to wipe off her makeup and take off her wig. It could have been fun, but it wasn't - because whoever wrote the clunky, clichéd script was no Willy Russell. Shirley Valentine still feels fresh and funny.

View of Chichester Cathedral from the Deanery, John Piper, 1975

Feeling Sunday-afternoon grumpy - I'm sure it's a throwback to all that never-quite-started weekend homework from 40-odd years ago - I took myself into town for an hour to Two Temple Place. I've always liked this view of Chichester Cathedral and it looks exactly the same today.

In Temple Gardens, they were filming Mary Poppins Returns - to London in the Depression, apparently. I peeped through the railings but couldn't see anything except busy-looking crew and lots of   trucks and cherry-pickers. If Mary was planning another Jolly Holiday with 91-year-old Bert, I hope she brought her parrot-headed umbrella  - because it looked as if was going to start chucking it down any minute.

It has been a very theatrical week. First up was a visit to Wilton's Music Hall which has been on my one-day-I-must-get round-to-it list for years. I vaguely remember having a peep about 30 years ago, when it wasn't even a building site, just a wreck and a fund-raising project. Well, I finally made it. Quite a lonely walk from Tower Hill - with a Jack the Ripper museum to spook you - so I was glad I'd brought a friend. (Don't worry, you're more likely to be mown down by killer cyclists and joggers.)
The Victorian music hall was quite different from what I'd imagined ... I was expecting red velvet and gold paint - but Wilton's was never grand, it was for sailors and dockers and they've kept all its shabbiness. We were fascinated by the building and went upstairs to explore all the nooks and crannies.
The play was Frankenstein ... I spent the first 10 minutes thinking, please God, don't let it all be mime! It was acted with - gusto - and greeted with the usual whoops and screams from the mostly young audience - but it did feel a bit like a drama studio exercise. Never mind, we'd come for the place not the play.

Last night, though, I saw Imelda Staunton in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 5* from all the critics and 5* from me. She's terrific.

A mid-morning whim got me the ticket ... but even as I left house I was thinking, 'Do I really want to spend the afternoon in a Jacobean bloodbath? ' But I'd never been to Sam Wanamaker's candlelit Playhouse and I wanted to see it. I've always been a bit ooooh-er wary of Webster. But guess what - it was terrific. From my seat in the upper gallery, I could have reached up and touched the painted clouds on the ceiling. And in the glimmering (real) candlelight, it felt like 400 years had rolled away and I was watching the first performance of The White Devil in 1612.

On my walk through the lanes yesterday ... the last of the snowdrops, clouds of white blossom, daffodils and primroses, crocuses and scilla and, in gardens, the first tulips and magnolia.
Today, sadly, tee-shirt weather has reverted to coat and scarf weather.
But I do have a jug of blossom by my desk.

Self-portrait, c1915

I'd been holding out for a sunny day to see the Vanessa Bell exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery, because it's not just the art, it's a green, leafy saunter from the station, and tea in the garden, and sunshine through the stained glass in the mausoleum ...
So it didn't really matter that I'm a lukewarm Bloomsbury-ite. I can get quite swept away with lifestyle envy at Charleston. But I'm not convinced that any of it translates well into an art gallery setting. If they hadn't lived in squares and loved in triangles - what a brilliant marketing ploy - would we remember any of them, except for Virginia? I can't see that Vanessa had an original thought ... it's a bit of Matisse here, a bit of Cézanne there, and it all looks so much better on the walls at home.
Still, it made a pleasant afternoon out, though I whizzed around in half-an-hour because - well, there just isn't very much to it, is there? (Okay, I admit, I'd really like one of her rugs.)
I was lucky because I'd been expecting hordes of Bloomsbury-genuflectors but there was hardly anyone there. (Got chatting with a couple of gallery attendants who were definitely not worshippers at the shrine and they clearly would have given Vanessa a C-minus for trying.)
But I do like the fabrics and that sense of painting happening in the middle of a domestic life. (Okay, I know that nanny features in the paintings!)
I liked the texture of the canvas coming though Vanessa's loose-weave grey dress in the self-portrait.

Virginia Woolf, c1912

'My God! what clothes you are responsible for!' wrote Virginia, cattily describing an outfit worn by their sister-in-law. 'Karin's clothes wrenched my eyes from the sockets - a skirt barred with reds and yellows of the violent kind, a pea-green blouse on top with a gaudy handkerchief on her head, supposed to be the very boldest taste. I shall retire into dove colour and old lavender, with a lace collar and lawn wristlets.' I wonder what she would have made of the wispy slips of silk - for anorexic Barbie dolls - selling for £195 in the gallery shop. An impulse buy along with a Charleston fridge magnet? You'd need a fridge lock first.

View of the Pond at Charleston, c1919

Many years ago I remember having a lovely picnic here beside the pond. It wasn't quite the same wandering down to Dulwich village for a deliciously greasy sausage roll from Gail's Bakery. (No wonder I don't fit into little Charleston dresses.)

The Other Room, Late 1930s

This one belongs to Bryan Ferry. And it's probably cheaper than a Matisse.

Interior with the Artists' Daughter, 1935-6

And this is just armchair envy ...