After a soggy start at home I set out for London through torrential rain. After a stop at daughter’s home (to collect hundreds of Beano comics which cannot be thrown away but “need” to be stored and read at The Gables!) I travelled on to Boundary Road where one side of the road is in the Borough of Camden and the other side in the Borough of Westminster. On the Camden side sits the Ben Uri Gallery and Museum (google if you are interested). I wanted to see a small but excellent exhibition of some of the work of Jankel Adler who fled to Paris from the Nazis in 1933 and then arrived, alone and penniless, on these shores in 1940.

He was close with another emigre artist, Josef Herman, and he had links with many other refugee artists in London and was earlier influenced by his contact with Klee in Germany and also by the work of Picasso. Adler was refused citizenship in Britain and died of a heart attack the day after his rejection in 1949. The exhibition made me think of all those millions of souls who seek succour and refuge from war and poverty. It was always thus and probably always will be with the addition of future climate change refugees. I needed cheering up and what better than a couple of hours with mum, on excellent form. We always have a laugh and a joke and mum’s carer, Olga, joins in and we all enjoy ourselves.

I returned in heavy rain and picked black currants and strawberries in a wet garden.