Today is the final day of the class and I continue to be productive which is great.

The weather is amazing and, as we're in the countryside today, I head off at lunch-time to enjoy lunch outdoors with my loved one.

Before I know it the class is over and its time to head home. I had such a lovely time teaching. As my last student left she said 'Thank you for sharing your talent with us'. That blew me away as I genuinely feel I go home more inspired, knowledgable, relaxed and happy from spending my time teaching these classes and the opportunity to spend time with these women. I am privileged to be able to do so and always appreciate when people spend their precious time and money to come to one of my classes. There is no greater compliment to me that people do so and return another time.

Not wanting to come straight home, we take a trip to Pallant House in Chichester which is kind of on the way (well, not really but so close it's worth it). You may remember I visited here recently and was baffled by the pine-cones. I was looking forward to going there today and seeing if I had made up my mind on their existance, but I was happy to discover that I am still just as baffled by them. It's always pleasing to me to have things to ponder and I hope these will be with me a while. I am willing to be swayed by any argument for and against, but at the end of the day I suspect I will never know for sure how I feel about them and that seems a nice prospect.

But then I was even more delighted to come across something which is not new, but that I have never paid much attention to previously- visitors' books.

At Pallant House there is an exhibition on currently by Anna Fox called Resort. It features brightly coloured photos of people staying at Butlins, a holiday camp. The photos look hyper real and I found them fun and funny. Whilst looking ast the exhibition I idly flicked the pages of the visitors' book and was shocked. Inside were comments, criticisms and sneery remarks. Not about the artwork, but instead about the subject matter. I am of course aware that there is a certain snobbiness and discrimination against holiday camps, but it wasn't until I looked in the book I realised just how snooty some people were about it. They said the show should be called 'The Last Resort' and Butlins was to be avoided. They expressed disgust at the fact they even existed and were sneery about the 'type of people' who would visit them.

As just that 'type of person' I take exception to the idea that people of a 'different class', background or income bracket shouldn't have exactly the type of holiday with their children they wish to. I have been extremely fortunate to have travelled to many different places on all different types of trips and have to say the weekend I spent at Butlins (Halloweeen 2009) was huge fun and stands out in my memory for the laughter and enjoyment that surrounded us. To go there I saved coupons from the newspaper, as I'm sure many of the other people there at the same time did, and took my then 10 year old niece. We spent days in the pool, going down water-slides, taking funfair rides, watching shows and playing fancy dress. Why should someone be deprived of that experience and those memories just because they don't fit someone else's ideal? I am happy that the ability to take your children somewhere fun exists for people whatever their budget. Why would anyone want to remove that possibility?

Would the people who wrote such comments in the visitors book be shocked to hear that at the time I was working as a magazine editor and 2 weeks later flew off to New York to work? Where does that put me in the social scale? I go to Butlins AND visit art galleries. Is that ok?

My anti-snobbiness muscle all worn out, we moved onto the exhibiton of work by Mervyn Peake. I am not really a fan of his work, but was hugely impressed by the skill involved. I, of course, now couldn't wait to read the visitors' book and this one was equally strange and delightful. Whilst there was no nasty comments, there were instead drawings by children, long passages by people talking about their lives and even just bits where some people had simply put in details of their blogs and websites. That was it, no comments or any explanations, just weird 'advertisements'. Even weirder was that when I got home none of the ones people had written in existed. What does that mean? I suspect I have discovered some secret way that spies use to communicate with each other in code. Surely there is no other explanation for such strangeness.

Downstairs at Pallant House there was an exhibition of artwork in aid of a local hospice which featured some outstanding work. I was truly mesmerised by the painting by Christopher Sercombe 'Bread and water'. I am in awe of anyone who can paint well and the ability to depict such details which so few strokes and 'smears' of colour takes my breathe away. I couldn't stop myself from looking at the painting again and again and eventually realised I could not live without it.