Ugh! It was hard waking up this morning at 6am, but at least it's a shorter week! Sophie went to the gym, I revived with a coffee, and Keith dropped me off at work.
I hadn't a clue what day it was today, but when Jo and Angela walked in, that grounded me. I had completed a Cyber Security training course before they came in, to take advantage of the peace and quiet!
The day continued to be busy, and I helped out with calls over lunch. The calls ramped up in the afternoon as we informed the parents of their new swimming lesson times. We will be moving a lot of children to different lessons at other pools, ones that we will still be running next April. I fully understand the reasons behind the decision (and we were warned we'd be seeing a lot of changes in the next few months), but some of the parents were in uproar about the new timings! I am expecting a flood of emails as well!
It was bliss to escape the noisy office at 4pm and head home, where I pottered about. Keith was going to see Sileby play tonight, and Sophie and I decided to open a bottle of the Ortega Dry wine from Biddenden and have a few cubes of the cheese we bought yesterday before dinner.
Sophie and I watched Fake or Fortune, which featured a painting by the Canadian artist, Helen McNicoll, and was first shown last year. David Taylor had bought the painting for about £2,500, and when they established it was definitely by her, the value rose to £300,000, according to Philip Mould. A keen collector had flown over from Canada to look at it and had made an offer, which David Taylor had turned down.
Tonight was a catch-up episode, and we learnt that Taylor had decided to auction the painting at Sotheby's, where, I suppose, he was hoping to get a higher price for the artwork. We saw the painting sell for about £150,000 to a mystery buyer, and I just knew it was the collector from Canada! I said to Sophie that he probably offered less than the valuation and gambled on Taylor turning down the offer so he would be forced to sell it at the auction. The Canadian would then be able to pick it up for less than he had originally offered.
Well, I was partly right! But the Canadian collector had offered the full valuation price of £300,000 and had therefore saved himself £150,000! He acted with integrity, which I admired, but we both thought that David Taylor was greedy. We were speechless at the end! Fiona Bruce tried to turn it into a positive by saying he had still made a profit, but the programme made Taylor look like a money-grasping idiot!
The loveliest thing is that eventually, all the artwork that the Canadian had collected would be gifted to the people of Canada to enjoy. What a great man and a true philanthropist!
Sophie and I had a lovely evening, enjoying our little cubes of cheese, the delicious wine and a chicken Kyiv each, served with peas and sweetcorn. Keith came home at about 10pm, looking nicely chilled, but was disappointed that Sileby had lost. Never mind!
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