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Saturday, February 13, 2010

It's Amelie Quakering in her boots!

Life's Rich Tapestry
When I say boots, I mean hot pink leather shoes. Unfortunately they got cropped out of the photo.

Anyhoo, now that Amelie's learnt to say quack, I decided to expand her vocabulary by approximately two letters, by taking her to meet the Quakers this morning. We actually went to visit The Quaker Tapestry, a 77-panel embroidery depicting more than 350 years of Quaker insights and experiences via the medium of cotton. It's usually displayed in mint condition in Kendal, but as luck would have it, 39 of those panels are currently on tour, and hanging around in Brighton for a month.

Entry to the exhibition in Cumbria costs £6.50, which is a bargain when you consider that it won The National Vegetarian Society 'Best Provision for Vegetarians at a Visitor Attraction 2007' award (no, really) but the Brighton version is even better value for money. It's free. Which is much more my kind of price. And frankly I can do without the vegeburgers.

So with Lisa keen to get us out of the house for a couple of hours while she got ready to meet a friend, Amelie and I did a similar thing and headed for the Friends Meeting House in Ship Street. Tragically, we got there to discover that photography is forbidden inside the exhibition, so I have no pictures of Amelie trying to stroke an embroidered horse, and leaving bits of rusk on the floor. But despite that, it was all very interesting.

We watched a five minute film about the tapestry, which informed us that one of the Quaker stitchers researched her panel depicting George Fox preaching, by studying men's bottoms. We then spent a further five minutes looking at the panel about William Penn and Pennsylvania, and wondering if 'Friends' was meant to be spelt 'Freinds', or if someone had dropped a stitch somewhere. We also liked the panel about The Underground Railroad, which looked like an early tube map, and the one about the ramifications of conscientious objection in the First World War. Let's face it, no one does porridge like Quakers.

So having had our Quaker oats, and lost the thread of the tapestry when we realised it was getting close to lunchtime, Amelie and I headed home for a quick bite of non-vegetarian food. We then drove Lisa over to Shoreham where she was meeting a friend for the afternoon. Sadly we weren't invited, but that didn't stop us having a whale of a time on the banks of the River Adur...

Cold Front
I think the warmth of Amelie's smile has been cooled somewhat by an afternoon outdoors in Shoreham on one of the coldest days of the year. If it wasn't for the central heating in the Cancer Research shop, we might never have felt our fingers again.

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