Turner's double, Satsuma vases and Polish street artist

How fantastic my Thursday has been, really!

Travelling with a group of Swedish students visiting Kew Gardens in the morning brought back so many memories of numerous educational visits to England that I used to organise for my students in Poland... It gave me so much pleasure to be able to talk about the places and things we saw, about London and its people, but also to learn about the Swedish students and their short, but intensive visit to London. It would be great to know if they made it to the Tree-Top Walk at Kew Gardens this afternoon! The level of their English was highly impressive, I must say.

The shop at Sheen was fun too, not just hard work. Look, I met JMW Turner! This customer had a great sense of humor. He tried on the hat and the shoes, examined the stick and eagerly posed for the pictures. Hang on! There is a worry... I posed for one with him as well. It was only fair after all, right?

As you may expect, I photographed many more items at the shop:

I suppose this picture will appeal to one of my (hopefully) frequent readers... :-)

The most exciting piece of costume jewellery, isn't it?

Somebody donated a huge number of self-help books of all sorts! The manager wondered if he brought them in a luxurious Jaguar.

Then I walked along the Sheen High Street:

 On a mission to Chiswick Auction House, at the last moment I hopped on the wrong train at Richmond Station. Luckily, realising it almost immediately, I got off  at this station and took pictures of the blue dome in the distance. It belongs to The Russian Orthodox Church.

 I got off at Stamford Brook, near my destination. Alas, dashi I went straight past it. When I reached The Old Cinema, which is now something entirely different, I knew I missed it and went inside to make sure. The two nice young lads were really keen to increse my 'confused-dot-com' state by telling me that there are two auction houses in Chiswick, one to the left and one to the right. Well, on learning that the other was off Chiswick High Rd, near or off Bollo Lane, I had no doubt I needed to retrieve. And so I did.

 The above picture is for the little Borys who recently discovered dinosaurs at The Natural History Museum. If he wants to see more of them, he needs to take his parents and the visiting grandpa to Croydon.:-)

And below you can see the vases which I delivered to the auction house held by the most knowledgeable and witty man I have recently met! The moment he looked at them he told me all about them at the speed of a machine gun, and did so in a most beautiful English! I was deeply impressed, honestly. What did I manage to remember? They are Satsuma vases from the beginning of the 20th century. On a scale from 1 to 10 they would score 4 points. Such vases can be decorated with an immense attention to detail. The best ones would have pictures where you can see individual lashes or drops of sweat on people's faces!

After the evaluation I spoke to a lovely Japanese woman at the reception. It felt like talking to a friend, seriously!

And now I need bed, so no commentary on the next Chiswick snaps, all the way to Turnham Green Station and a little detour beyond!

But how can I go away without telling you about this man. Going past him for the third time, I shook out all the coins from my purse, asked permission to take a picture and started a chat. He seats and draws, because his health has failed him and he is unfit for work he used to do. He was a decorator. Both of us recognised a Pole in each other. He's been in the UK for nearly eight years. Look at his drawings. Maybe Sir Elton John will look at his portrait here, maybe one of his fans will fancy to have it? Maybe somebody from the nearby POSK (POlish Cultural Centre) will give him a hand?  Who knows? Let's test the power of THE INTERNET!