I'm So Excited

On the long long journey back from Scotland last night I turned to Twitter while it was Marion's turn to drive to see if I could catch up on what's been going on in Framlingham while we were away. A tweet from the excellent @aboutfram girls Sarah and Kathy caught my eye - something about a cinema in Framlingham. A cinema? In Framlingham? If you know me and Marion you'll know how much we love going to the pictures and how we travel regularly to Aldeburgh, Woodbridge and Ipswich to get our fix of the big screen. 

A cinema in Framlingham would be a dream come true. "What about film@fram?" I hear you ask. Well, I know that our local film society has been going for a long time and shows some fairly decent films but let's face it, Framlingham Conservative Club is hardly a theatre of dreams or electric picture palace. It has the atmosphere of ..........well, a Conservative club. We tried it once, great film, shame about the place.

A bit of further investigation led us here , a site proclaiming "Soho Arthouse Cinema Comes To Framlingham". Okay so there may perhaps be a bit of poetic license in that but anyone trying to show decent films in Framlingham has our backing to the hilt. We logged onto the site and checked out the films that they are planning to screen. We've seen most of them but that doesn't mean that we won't be supporting the venture and we've already booked our tickets for Cinema Paradiso on 19 July - it's a brilliant film but we haven't seen this director's cut which runs for almost three hours. For the very reasonable price of admission the organisers are including a glass of fizz AND a simple Italian meal. That's a bargain. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this venture will be supported by the people of Framlingham and that Cinema Paradiso is the first of many films screened in this, yet to be announced, secret barn location. 

It was almost 1.30 a.m when we arrived home from the drive (thanks to roadworks shutting the A14 and giving us a twenty minute diversion) and we didn't wake up until 9.40 this morning. But we've managed to catch up and I found time to collect our seagull sculpture from near Woodbridge. The Art For Cure event was a huge success and raised £101,300 for Breakthrough Breast Cancer - we're delighted to have made a small contribution to that success and are very pleased with the sculpture.

The Sleeper Is Dead

I've been doing a bit of antique hunting lately due to my experiment with selling on eBay again after an absence of several years. I'm enjoying the hunting for bargains very much and we'll see how successful I have been on the next two Sunday evenings when the eBay auctions on eight of the items I've bought and four pieces from our collection finish. When I did this as a hobby/business I used to scour the local sale rooms for pieces that had escaped the auctioneers eye (they can't be expert in everything) and sometimes I would end up with a real bargain. This is what is known in the trade as a "sleeper".

But, now that we have the internet, more and more auctioneers are putting their lots online and, instead of just a few locals casting their eyes over the lots on offer, the whole world can have a look if they wish and, whilst there are still plenty of sleepers around, the chances of you being the only one to notice them are becoming slimmer and slimmer. I mentioned earlier this week that we'd spotted two lots at the auction in Campsea Ashe with pre-sale estimates around the £100 mark that ended up selling for ten times those estimates. Yesterday I found another very interesting piece in Beccles.

I don't know anything about Japanese costume accessories but I thought these silk items were beautiful and worth a bit more than the auction estimate of £50-£70. So we logged on and followed the auction ready to bid when they came up. The bidding started at £50 and I was ready to put my £250 bid in when other internet bidders piled in. Thirty seconds later the price was £1,900 (plus about 20% commission.) The internet must be doing wonders for auctioneers' commissions but the poor local dealers' chances of finding a sleeper have all but disappeared. What I need to find now are some good old fashioned auctioneers who haven't yet found their way online.

In other news, we weren't happy with the frame on this painting in the dining room. The black looked really stark and shouted out too much so when we saw an advert for framer Hamish Bell in the About Fram newsletter we gave him a ring to ask what ideas he could come up with. We weren't disappointed. Whilst we would have been happy to have the painting reframed, Hamish suggested re-painting the frame instead.

Here is the result. The frame no longer screams at us and the painting looks so much better. Thanks Hamish.

We had some friends around for dinner last night. I thought the table settings looked great. I think our guests enjoyed themselves as it was after two when they left - it was almost three when we had finished the clearing up.

I'll end today with this. We saw it at the cinema the other night. It's right up my street.