Down to Ditchling for a visit to the Museum of Arts & Crafts, but up and out and so eager to beat the traffic we arrived an hour before opening time. A drive up to Ditchling Beacon gave us glimpses of Ravilious landscapes but nowhere to park (a burnt-out car in the NT’s car  park would have been ideal for one of those ‘rural Britain’s not what you think it is’ photo series). I’d like to return to Ditchling and Ditchling Beacon when it’s not full of traffic (of which, of course, we were part). The villages of the South Downs are like another country; an odd reminder that the edge-of-town neighbourhood I grew up in Durham have more in common with the south-east London semi-suburb I live in now than the hidden away corners of the rural Home Counties have.

I very much liked the museum once we got in; interesting displays, a serene atmosphere, and we enjoyed adding our amateurish contributions to the Big Steam Print linocut. 

Next, to the Interrobang letterpress exhibition – part of the artists’ open house weekend taking place in the village. A nice display and I was tempted by a couple of prints, but really need to get through the backlog of pictures to frame and hang before acquiring any more (still not worked out where to hang Brighter Later yet). One thing that occurred to me, not specific to Interrobang is that a lot of letterpress art ends up being about letterpress and, while it’s nice to see the craft celebrated, there’s an implied sense of the limitations of the process.

Then home via Nyman’s: nice meadowland and planting and some timely use of the National Trust membership we took out last year and have hardly used since.

An evening wrestling with a mortgage application accompanied by Vic Mars – a perfect accompaniment to a pastoral rural day, if not for dealing with tedium of financial admin.