This morning we heard Verdi’s Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves on the radio and some lovely memories came flooding back. The Summer before my lovely Dad went blind, we took him to Venice, a city which he loved and where he loved using his Italian. One of the trips we took was to Verona to the Opera Festival in the arena where we were all entranced by Verdi’s Nabucco. The Chorus of the Slaves was so well received that it was repeated, much to the disgust of the opera buffs and the delight of the rest of the audience who by then had their candles lit in the darkness, just as in this recording. I hope you can imagine the three of us sitting there just loving this. It was the best thing we ever did for Dad though of course, we did not know then  that he would  go blind the following February, and he a writer and reader and inveterate ‘looker-upper.’

Our Clematis Elizabeth is having a second flush, just two pretty blossoms.

Elizabeth, Clematis Montana

Daughter No3 wanted some photos of our tiled hall floor for the restoration project on their house and I saw again how lovely the tiles are and how lucky that we are to have them here.

Victorian tiled hall floor