Dulwich OnView

Liz Moody’s Dulwich Life is written by Anna Sayburn, inspired by Gainsborough’s portrait “Mrs Elizabeth Moody and Her Two Sons”. It imagines how Mrs Moody might live today.

Wednesday 16 April
A strange thing happened. As I walked the boys to school, Sam was lecturing me about drinking too much. They’ve been doing drugs and alcohol at school, he said, which sounded a bit alarming. But he said no, he meant learning about addiction and how people misuse substances as emotional crutches. Believe me, there’s no worse killjoy than a 10-year-old boy doing PSHE.

Anyway, Mr Linley, I mean Ozias, was on playground duty. I hadn’t seen him since our tete a tete last month in the café. He gave me a very sympathetic look, then drew me aside and said he’d always be very happy to talk, if ever I needed to. I’m not sure if he was suggesting a date – bit inappropriate, what with all the kids around – so I just laughed and said we’d have to have a drink sometime. He nodded sadly, and I came home.

Sunday 20 April
Spent the afternoon with Mrs Yoga and the boys, over at Mummy’s, putting together the plans for our big olive oil tasting party. We’ve got rosemary, chilli, thyme, tarragon and garlic infused oil, plus three grades of oil to use for salad dressing, dipping bread in and cooking.

Tom designed the invitations on Mummy’s computer. I’ve put a photo of Sarah on it, with ‘special guest’ in big letters underneath. Decided against using her press shots from the current production – they’re really not the most flattering. Not even Siena Miller could carry off that Eva Braun hairdo, as most of the reviewers have sadly pointed out.

Mummy has agreed we can have the tasting in her conservatory. We’re going to hire a lot of little olive trees, use Mummy’s collection of Tuscan pottery bowls, play Pavarotti and whack up the central heating. I hope to goodness it’s stopped raining by next Sunday.

Photo: Thanks to Rob Wallace on Flickr (CCL)

Gainsborough’s “Mrs Elizabeth Moody and her two sons” can be viewed until 5pm every day except Mondays at Dulwich Picture Gallery (Picture by Permission of the Trustees of Dulwich Picture Gallery)