Had a very long day, travelling to Birmingham and leaving at 6am. Arrived back home 14 hours later. First stop was at the visa office to submit my paperwork for a very exciting trip I’m planning for next month – more to come on that. We had enough time to drive into the city centre to visit the most excellent Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, or BMAG. We saw one of the best collections of Pre-Raphaelites anywhere; Grayson Perry’s ‘The Vanity Of Small Differences‘ and a lovely collection of Japanese antique woodcuts, netsukes and laquerwork. All for FREE! The museum is huge and we only saw a fraction of their collections. We took half an hour for tea and scones in the magnificent Edwardian tea room where I did this very quick scribble, using a 2B pencil into my little A6 spotty sketchbook.
scribblah 
Very exciting to hear soon about your new project. And how nice that you could do some fun things in Birmingham in addition to the visa office. Happy day!
Thank you – I haven’t really explored Birmingham before, it’s rather lovely and there’s loads of art.
I’m so happy to hear they took your paperwork this time! Dave got his visa back last week for his big work journey. May yours come with time to spare.
Glad you made it to a museum. Lucky you!
Thanks Gale, have to wait 5 days for the darn thing to be processed but fingers crossed! We’re getting very close to the deadline!
Wow a long day with driving too, glad to hear it was enjoyable nonetheless and you made it back in a good enough state to even blog about it! Great sketch!
Excited to hear about the planned trip… visa eh? Sounds exotic….!
Exotic indeed. Hopefully I’ll have the visa back in 5 days, then all will be revealed!
Yes I remember going to Birmingham a few years ago to visit the NT’s Back to Backs. We’re were also very impressed by BMAG but managed to avoid the prerafs. (Sorry, but the pouty women get to me!).
Yeah, Husb and I are far less impressed by the Prerafs after this visit. We concluded that the ones we see in posters and books are the very best of a rather mediocre lot. Surprising how many pouty men there are too!