Pictures are poems without words ~ Horace

Another arty posting to end the week, with an enjoyable meet-the-artists soiree at Cheese and Grain hosted by Amy Yates & Rosie Hart ~ here's Rosie with her painting of The Cure's Robert Smith. Rosie's big portraits are essentially monochrome so with Amy's smaller & colourful landscapes this exhibition, which runs throughout the month, offers interesting contrasts.
And a bubbly opening night on Friday at Rook Lane, A Year with the Frome Sketchers is the delightful outcome of a one-day 'sketch crawl' to promote appreciation of urban architecture all around us. Fifty fabulously varied responses from David Chandler's art group combine to an intriguing and quirky collection of glimpses of Frome. On view till 15th November, recommended.

I'm off now for a blast of winter warmth in southern Spain, sorry to miss the 'inspirational spoken word and music' at the Sunday Sessions in Frome, but not sad to avoid the contentious celebration that November 11th has become this year.  War poet Siegfried Sassoon wrote in 1917: 'I believe that this War, on which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest.  I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.  I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust.'  My white poppy is now by his headstone in Mells graveyard in respect for suffering troops and victims everywhere, and for all who act in wilful defiance of military authority.