The last weeks of 2010 have been snow dominated which is really surprising for this time of year s we don’t usually get this much snow until February and it’s been colder than for many decades – global warning eh! London had a couple of major ‘dumps’ as they are called tho’ it seems an odd word to me. So of course here are a set of photos from my locality including the biggest bus queue in London where at least 12 number 52s were stuck due to the smallest hill – poor show! See if you can spot the snowman…

Some of the best exhibitions are the small ones and I visited the Courtauld Gallery to see the Cezanne’s Card Players series. He painted several of the same group in similar positions showing his appreciation of the peasants and their lives. It was wonderful and just this single room of paintings gave me a much deeper understanding of Cezanne. The Courtauld Gallery is a small gem which is packed full of great works and only £6 to get in!It is known for the its collection of impressionist and post impressionist masterpieces, thanks to the collector Samuel Courtauld It is the front part, the entrance gate, of the Somerset House complex which houses an ice rink at this time of year in its beautiful courtyard. I dropped in during a snow storm and it was good to see that this did not deter the brave skaters.

It’s panto season so we booked into our local Notting Hill version of Sleeping Beauty which gave us the usual chaotic good fun show at the Tabernacle. It has plenty of improvisation (for which we mean – somewhat under-rehearsed!) and some great in-jokes and splendid acting from the tiniest of kids. We boo’d we hissed and chanted ‘behind you’ with the best of them and finished the show with full rendition of Slade’s ‘So here it is, merry Christmas’…. Very festive!