Happy Halloween Oct. 31, 2006

We have had a nice end of October at Ambleside. It has been half-term for the schools. As tradition dictates, it has poured. But the people have been so nice. A girl of 1 (well almost) called AVA sent me a Thomas Tank styled lapel badge with my name on it, which she had made. One boy wrote in my comments book : “I’ve come from Milton Keynes, I support Liverpool and I’m 10 years old. I love your amazing pictures, how do you do it? I’m a subbuteo fan and love your pitch”. He even spellt Subbuteo right.

We have 80,000 visitors a year, maybe less in recent years what with the loss of some foreign tourists after 11–9 and the Brits finding it cheaper to spend a weekend in Morocco or Portugal or Corfu in the sun.

Oddly, no one as far as I know has ever come into the gallery wearing a veil. Not even on Halloween. Many people wear sunglasses and don’t take them off when they speak but as far as I know not a single person in a veil. What a shame. Muslims, or rather Muslim women, perhaps don’t like football or think such a gallery like mine is not meant to be for them. However, they and their families do come to the Lakes in numbers and love going on the Windermere & Ullswater steamboats as well as sitting by the lake having a barbecue.